Zelenskyy visits Canada to seek further military support for Ukraine
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in Canada on Thursday for talks with Prime Minister Mark Carney, his latest international trip aimed at locking in future support for the fight against Russia’s invasion.
Ukraine is under pressure from Russia’s air war, which is using ballistic missiles and jet-powered drones to pierce defenses. Moscow’s attacks have targeted Ukraine’s power grid ahead of the upcoming winter as part of its campaign to demoralize civilians, Ukrainian officials say.
“The main focus will be on supporting Ukraine in protecting our skies and preparing for the winter,” Zelenskyy said of his Canada trip in a social media post. “We will discuss how to strengthen our resilience, support our people and ensure that Ukraine has the capabilities it needs to defend itself.”
Canada and European countries are sending their own weaponry to Ukraine and are also buying American weapons for Kyiv under the so-called Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List, or PURL. The United States under President Donald Trump has stopped donating weapons to Ukraine.
At a press conference following the talks, Carney announced a $254 million package of critical air-defense interceptors for Ukraine through a U.S. mechanism and said Canada would provide more than $312 million in loan guarantees to help Ukraine buy natural gas ahead of winter. He also said one-third of the drones Canada manufactures under a major expansion of its domestic drone industry will go to Ukraine.
Zelenskyy had previewed the air-defense announcement earlier Thursday, calling it “a decision for our lives."
Carney also said Canada and Ukraine would deepen cooperation on drones, counter-drone systems and munitions and signed what he called a “Hundred Year Partnership” covering defense, trade, reconstruction, energy, critical minerals and technology.
Carney said Canada would continue backing Ukraine after the fighting ends. “Ukrainians helped build Canada, and Canadians will help rebuild Ukraine,” he said, adding that any future peace must be backed by deterrence rather than trust in Moscow.
Carney said Canada plans to build the capacity to produce millions of drones within two years, with one-third of those manufactured going to support Ukraine’s defense.
During a photo opportunity before the talks, Zelenskyy said negotiations with Russia would eventually come but Ukraine needed to enter them from a position of strength. “We need to be strong, not to be weak,” he said, adding that Ukraine needed a “strong and lasting peace.”
Recent U.S. efforts to stop the more than four years of fighting have delivered no significant breakthrough, although Washington-brokered talks between delegations from Moscow and Kyiv are expected to continue.
Zelenskyy’s arrival on Wednesday night in Calgary, Alberta, came the day after his flight from Moldova to Norway was delayed when authorities closed Moldova’s airspace because of a drone incursion.
The aerial drone battle between Russia and Ukraine has grown in scale since Russia’s all-out invasion in February 2022. Ukraine’s neighbors Romania and Moldova, and other European countries, have reported repeated drone incursions.
Four people were killed and more than 60 injured in a Russian attack on the Ukrainian city of Pavlohrad, Dnipropetrovsk regional head Oleksandr Ganzha said on Telegram on Thursday afternoon.
One person was killed and two others wounded in a Russian drone attack on the Kyiv region on Thursday morning, regional head Tymur Tkachenko said.
Russian forces launched 149 drones, many of them jet-propelled, at Ukraine overnight, Ukraine’s air force said Thursday.
Meanwhile, one person was killed and six others were injured in Ukrainian drone strikes in the Belgorod border region, local officials said Thursday.
A Ukrainian sea drone wounded 28 people, including two children, on the waterfront in the Russian city of Sochi, local officials said. They said that beach infrastructure had been damaged but did not provide further details.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense said Thursday that its forces shot down 448 Ukrainian drones overnight. The drones were destroyed over 13 Russian regions, as well as the annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and the Black and Caspian seas, the ministry said.
Falling debris from a Ukrainian drone set fire to a home in Russia’s southwestern Voronezh region, killing one woman and wounding two other people, local Gov. Alexander Gusev said Thursday.
Ukrainian forces struck eight Russian infrastructure targets supporting the war effort over the past 24 hours, including a refinery in the Yamalo-Nenets region and a port in Dagestan, Zelenskyy said Thursday.
Targets in the Moscow, Voronezh, Astrakhan and Bryansk regions were also hit, he said.
Those targets were hundreds of kilometers (miles) apart, underlining the scope and scale of Ukraine's domestically developed long-range drone technology that has unsettled Russia.
The previous day, Ukrainian forces struck an oil refinery more than 3,000 kilometers (1,800 miles) from Ukraine in Siberia, Ukraine’s General Staff said, confirming earlier reports.
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