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Sunday, June 22, 2025

Zelenskyy visits Berlin as he seeks more support for Ukraine’s defence as Russia steps up attacks

by

GUARDIAN MEDIA NEWSROOM
24 days ago
20250528
Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz, right, welcomes Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during an official military reception at the chancellery in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, May 28, 2025.(AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz, right, welcomes Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during an official military reception at the chancellery in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, May 28, 2025.(AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

Markus Schreiber

Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy met with new Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Friedrich Merz in Berlin on Wednes­day as Ukraine seeks fur­ther mil­i­tary sup­port amid a re­cent es­ca­la­tion in Rus­sia’s bomb­ing cam­paign, de­spite U.S.-led ef­forts to end the war.

Ger­many has been the sec­ond-biggest sup­pli­er of mil­i­tary aid to Ukraine af­ter the Unit­ed States. Merz has plunged in­to diplo­mat­ic ef­forts to try to se­cure a cease­fire and keep West­ern sup­port for Ukraine in­tact since be­com­ing Ger­many’s leader three weeks ago. Eu­ro­pean lead­ers have ac­cused Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin of drag­ging his feet in U.S.-led peace talks.

Ger­man For­eign Min­is­ter Jo­hann Wade­phul was set to meet in Wash­ing­ton with U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio on Wednes­day.

Ze­len­skyy said Tues­day that Ukraine is ready to hold peace talks at the high­est lev­el, in­clud­ing a tri­lat­er­al meet­ing with him­self, Putin and U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.

“We are ready to meet at the lev­el of lead­ers. Both the Amer­i­can side knows this, and the Russ­ian side knows this,” he said. Ze­len­skyy said he would ac­cept any con­fig­u­ra­tion of talks, whether that in­cludes one tri­lat­er­al meet­ing or sep­a­rate meet­ings with Trump.

Krem­lin spokesman Dmit­ry Peskov said that Rus­sia is grate­ful to Trump for his me­di­a­tion ef­forts.

“At the same time, there is a big num­ber of nu­ances to be dis­cussed that can’t be ne­glect­ed and which nei­ther par­ty is go­ing to sac­ri­fice, be­cause of its na­tion­al in­ter­ests,” Peskov told re­porters. “Just like the Unit­ed States, Rus­sia has its na­tion­al in­ter­ests that are of pri­ma­ry im­por­tance to us.”

He said that Moscow will “soon” de­liv­er its promised mem­o­ran­dum on a frame­work for a peace set­tle­ment.

Tau­rus cruise mis­siles may be dis­cussed

Merz said on Mon­day that Ger­many and oth­er ma­jor al­lies are no longer im­pos­ing any range re­stric­tions on weapons sup­plied to Ukraine as it fights to re­pel Rus­sia’s full-scale in­va­sion, which be­gan in Feb­ru­ary 2022.

Merz’s gov­ern­ment hasn’t said whether it will sup­ply its Tau­rus long-range cruise mis­siles to Ukraine, some­thing his pre­de­ces­sor, Olaf Scholz, re­fused to do and which Merz ad­vo­cat­ed for as op­po­si­tion leader. The gov­ern­ment has said it would no longer pro­vide full de­tails of the weapons it’s sup­ply­ing to Ukraine, un­like Scholz’s ad­min­is­tra­tion, cit­ing the need for “strate­gic am­bi­gu­i­ty.”

Tau­rus mis­siles have a range of up to 500 kilo­me­ters (310 miles). The Ger­man- and Swedish-made mis­siles, which are equipped with stealth tech­nol­o­gy, would be able to reach tar­gets deep in Rus­sia from Ukrain­ian soil, in­clud­ing the Black Sea. Ukraine wants the mis­siles to com­ple­ment the long-range Storm Shad­ow mis­siles sent by Britain and France’s near­ly iden­ti­cal Scalp cruise mis­siles.

Ze­len­skyy said that he plans to dis­cuss the sup­ply and use of long-range weapons in his talks with Merz. The Ukrain­ian leader said Tues­day that he hasn’t re­ceived any in­di­ca­tions from Ger­many that their pol­i­cy of lim­it­ing the use of West­ern weapons against Russ­ian tar­gets has changed.

Ukraine needs $30 bil­lion in ad­di­tion­al fi­nanc­ing to help it com­pete with Rus­sia in the pro­duc­tion of drones and mis­siles, Ze­len­skyy said. Rus­sia is aim­ing to pro­duce 300-350 drones per day, he said.

Front-line fight­ing, deep strikes con­tin­ue

Mean­while, fight­ing has con­tin­ued along the rough­ly 1,000-kilo­me­ter (620-mile) front line, where Ukraine’s army is short­hand­ed against its big­ger ad­ver­sary. Ze­len­skyy claimed Tues­day that Rus­sia is mo­bi­liz­ing up to 45,000 men every month, while Ukraine mo­bi­lizes be­tween 25,000-27,000.

Both sides are con­tin­u­ing to con­duct deep strikes. Rus­sia launched its biggest drone at­tack of the war against Ukraine on Sun­day.

Russ­ian air de­fences downed 296 Ukrain­ian drones over 13 Russ­ian re­gions late Tues­day and ear­ly Wednes­day, Rus­sia’s De­fense Min­istry said, in what ap­peared to be one of the biggest Ukrain­ian drone as­saults of the war.

Ukraine is in­creas­ing its do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion of drones and mis­siles, ac­cord­ing to Ze­len­skyy. He said late Tues­day that Ukraine wants Eu­ro­pean coun­tries to help it in­vest in the man­u­fac­tur­ing of at­tack drones, air de­fense in­ter­cep­tors, cruise mis­siles and bal­lis­tic sys­tems.

Moscow May­or Sergei Sobyanin said that air de­fens­es shot down Ukrain­ian 33 drones head­ing to­ward the cap­i­tal.

An­drei Voroby­ov, the gov­er­nor of the Moscow re­gion, said that 42 drones were downed. He said that drone frag­ments dam­aged three res­i­den­tial build­ings in the vil­lage of Troit­skoye, but no one was hurt.

Moscow air­ports de­layed or di­vert­ed hun­dreds of flights.

Overnight, Russ­ian forces launched an at­tack on Ukraine us­ing five Iskan­der bal­lis­tic mis­siles, one guid­ed air-launched mis­sile and 88 drones, Ukraine’s Air Force said Wednes­day. Air de­fense units shot down 34 drones, and 37 drones were jammed.

Ukraine’s rail­way in­fra­struc­ture and equip­ment in the Kharkiv, Donet­sk and Sumy re­gions al­so came un­der fire overnight and Wednes­day morn­ing, Ukraine’s state rail­way com­pa­ny Ukrza­l­iznyt­sia said. No ca­su­al­ties were re­port­ed.

In Kharkiv re­gion, rail­way traf­fic was tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed so that po­lice and emer­gency work­ers could clear de­bris from a downed drone that land­ed on the tracks. In Slo­vian­sk in the Donet­sk re­gion, the at­tack shat­tered win­dows at the sta­tion build­ing, and drone de­bris slight­ly dam­aged a train car. —BERLIN (AP)

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Sto­ry by STE­FANIE DAZIO | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Han­na Arhi­ro­va and Samya Kul­lab con­tributed to this re­port from Kyiv, Ukraine.


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