Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was making his first official visit to Serbia — a rare European country still closely aligned with Moscow — on Saturday as Ukraine seeks to bolster international support in the face of intensifying Russian strikes.

Mr. Zelenskyy received a ceremonial welcome as talks with his counterpart Aleksandar Vucic got under way at the presidential palace, after another intense bombardment of Kyiv and the surrounding region overnight killed at least four people.

Diplomacy is at a standstill more than four years after the start of Russia’s large-scale offensive against Ukraine and the two countries are ramping up long-range strikes, causing a growing number of civilian casualties.

Moscow has significantly upped its attacks on the Ukrainian capital in recent months, typically firing salvos of hard-to-intercept ballistic missiles in short blitzes, with Ukraine pleading for more U.S.-made Patriot interceptors.

Kyiv, in turn, has been firing record numbers of drones at Russia in retaliation.

A senior Ukrainian official earlier described Mr. Zelenskyy’s visit to Moscow’s traditional ally Serbia as “a slap in the face for the Russians”.

Serbia is historically close to Russia and Vucic has refused to sanction Moscow, a move that has irked the EU and slowed Belgrade’s path to joining the bloc.

Mr. Zelenskyy had dinner on Friday with Vucic, who repeated this week that he will not change his mind on sanctions, ahead of the talks.

“We will discuss expanding economic ties between our countries, relations with the European Union, other areas that can benefit our nations, and security issues,” Mr. Zelenskyy said on X.

After arriving at the palace on Saturday (August 8) morning, the leaders posed for photos before talks began behind closed doors.

They are later due to address the media.

Mr. Zelenskyy — who has toured much of the world seeking support since Russia’s 2022 invasion — has not visited Serbia since he became president in 2019.

Although heavily dependent on cheap Russian gas and one of the rare European leaders to still visit Moscow, Vucic has also supplied non-military aid to Kyiv.

The Kremlin has accused Serbian firms of selling munitions to Ukraine, a claim Vucic has repeatedly denied.

Vucic went to Ukraine for a regional summit in 2025 and visited Kyiv this year. He has promised assistance to Ukraine but avoided signing a formal declaration of support in the war.

Three-year-old killed

The visit comes as Russia launched another overnight barrage of missiles and drones, targeting mostly the capital Kyiv region.

The attack killed three people, including a child, outside Kyiv, Mr. Zelenskyy said on X on Saturday.

“Last night, Russia killed three people in Pukhivka, Kyiv region, with drone strikes — a grandfather, a grandmother, and their grandson,” Mr. Zelenskyy said, adding that “the boy was only three years old”.

Ukraine’s state emergency service shared photos of a destroyed building in flames, saying the attack in Pukhivka destroyed a two-storey house and two cars and sparked a fire in a warehouse.

“Four more people were hospitalised: the child’s parents, his 15-year-old brother, and a neighbour who came to the family’s aid and was wounded in a double-tap strike,” Mr. Zelenskyy said.

Another person was killed in a strike “involving six ballistic missiles against civilian infrastructure in Kyiv.”

He urged more pressure on Russia, including “new sanctions that will prevent the production of these ballistic missiles”.

An AFP reporter in the capital heard a dozen explosions as Ukraine’s air force warned of the “threat of ballistic weapon use from the north”.

Published – August 08, 2026 09:32 pm IST

A Nova Poshta postal warehouse is destroyed following Russian air attack on the outskirts of Kharkiv, Ukraine, Sunday, Aug. 2, 2026.
| Photo Credit: AP

Serhii Koretskyi, head of state energy company Naftogaz. File
| Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Workers clean an area at a site of a Russian drone strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine April 28, 2026.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

U.S. President Donald Trump with Russian President Vladimir Putin. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (L) and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman meeting in Jeddah.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Russian President Vladimir Putin. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he could meet with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, but only after his allies agree on security guarantees for Ukraine to deter future Russian attacks once the fighting stops.

In comments released Thursday, he also warned that both sides were preparing for further fighting. Russia was building up troops on the southern front line and Ukraine was test-launching a new long-range cruise missile, he said.

Russia said Thursday that Ukraine did not appear to be interested in “long-term” peace, accusing Kyiv of seeking security guarantees completely incompatible with Moscow’s demands.

U.S. President Donald Trump is trying to end Russia’s three-and-a-half-year invasion of Ukraine through talks with Mr. Zelenskyy and Mr. Putin.

While he has upended a years-long Western policy of isolating the Russian leader, he has made little tangible progress towards a peace deal.

“We want to have an understanding of the security guarantees architecture within seven to 10 days,” Zelensky said, in comments to reporters released for publication Thursday.

“We need to understand which country will be ready to do what at each specific moment,” he added.

A group of allies led by Britain and France are putting together a military coalition to support the guarantees.

Fresh Russian barrage

Once an outline of the security guarantees is agreed upon, Mr. Trump would like to see a bilateral meeting between Mr. Putin and Mr. Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian leader said.

But any meeting with the Russian leader should he held in a “neutral” European country, he added, ruling out any summit in Moscow.

He also rejected the idea of China playing a role in guaranteeing Ukraine’s security, citing Beijing’s alleged support for Moscow.

Mr. Zelenskyy’s comments came as Russia launched hundreds of drones and missiles against Ukraine overnight — the biggest barrage since mid-July — killing one person in the western city of Lviv and wounding many others.

Russian missiles also targeted an American-owned factory complex in town of Mukachevo in the west of Ukraine, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said on social media. That attack wounded 19 people, she added.

President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine Andy Hunder said that the factory was “one of the largest American investments in Ukraine.

“Russia continues to destroy and humiliate U.S. businesses in Ukraine, targeting companies that invest and trade on the US stock markets,” Hunder said on Facebook.

France on Thursday condemned the overnight strikes as showing Moscow’s “lack of will to seriously engage in peace talks”, describing them as the “most massive attack in a month”.

A later shelling of the city of Kherson killed one person and wounded more than a dozen, a local official said.

Russia claims advances

On the front lines, Russia said it had captured the village of Oleksandro-Shultyne in the eastern Donetsk region, the latest in a long string of territorial gains.

The village lies less than eight kilometres (five miles) from Kostiantynivka, a fortified town in the Donetsk region that Russia has been pressing towards on both sides.

In comments to journalists Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Ukraine of making unrealistic security demands.

Any deployment of European troops to the country would be “absolutely unacceptable”, he said.

Rhetorics of the Ukrainian officials “was directly showing that they are not interested in a sustainable, fair, long-term settlement,” Lavrov added.

Mr. Zelenskyy also announced that Ukraine had tested a long-range cruise missile, known as Flamingo, that can strike targets as far as 3,000 kilometres (1,864 miles) away.

“The missile has undergone successful tests. It is currently our most successful missile,” he told reporters.

Mass production could begin by February, he added.

Since Mr. Trump returned to the White House in January and began pushing for an end to the fighting, Russian forces have continued to slowly but steadily gain ground across the front line.

Zelensky said Russian forces were building up troops along the front in the Zaporizhzhia region, which Moscow claims as its own — along with four other Ukrainian regions.

Trump met Putin in Alaska last Friday, before bringing Zelensky and European leaders to Washington for separate talks on Monday.

Mr. Zelenskyy has said the only way to end the war is a meeting with Mr. Putin, and has said Mr. Trump should be present too.

But Moscow has played down the prospect of a summit between Mr. Putin and Mr. Zelenskyy any time soon, saying it wants to be included in discussions on future security guarantees for Ukraine.

Published – August 21, 2025 09:59 pm IST

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. File
| Photo Credit: AP

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is set to meet U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance in Germany on Friday (January 14, 2025) with a warning against trusting Russia’s Vladimir Putin, as concerns mount in Kyiv and among its European allies that the Ukraine war will be settled over their heads.

The Munich Security Conference starts days after U.S. President Donald Trump and Putin held watershed talks that have shaken Ukraine and America’s NATO allies almost three years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

Mr. Trump said he had agreed with Mr. Putin to soon start Ukraine peace talks and exchange friendly visits — a sea change after years in which the Russian President was internationally isolated.

As top Trump officials held a series of meetings in Europe on Thursday, Mr. Zelenskyy warned world leaders “against trusting Putin’s claims of readiness to end the war” and said he wanted the United States to agree a “plan to stop Putin” before any negotiations.

Kyiv’s European backers fear Mr. Trump could force Ukraine into a bad peace deal that will leave them facing an emboldened Putin — while paying the lion’s share of costs for post-war security.

Among the European leaders, diplomats and generals in Munich, many hold grave concerns over the deepening chasm between the transatlantic allies and even for the post-World War II international order itself.

The new U.S. administration signalled Ukraine would have to give up territory to Russia and that NATO membership for Kyiv was “impractical”.

European allies were stunned to be bluntly informed that the future task of helping secure Ukraine would fall to them alone, in line with Trump’s “America First” stance and his heightened focus on China as the main strategic adversary.

Timothy Garton Ash, a professor of European studies at Oxford, wrote that America’s “message to Europe was pretty stark on Ukraine — it’s your problem. We will help cut a deal with Russia — but policing that is up to you.

“That is surely a green light for Putin to test that defence in Ukraine, meaning that Ukraine and Europe will hardly be secure as a result of a peace agreed by Trump.”

Meeting NATO partners, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth denied Trump’s 90-minute phone call with Putin on Wednesday meant a betrayal of Kyiv’s war effort.

EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas said Thursday that “any deal behind our backs will not work” and that “appeasement also always fails”.

Dividing the world

Mr. Zelenskyy, despite facing the prospect of having Ukraine’s key demands ignored after years of a gruelling war, has pushed back with moderate language, apparently eager to keep a seat at the table when the big powers strike a deal over his country’s future.

He said it was “not very pleasant” that Trump had called Putin first before speaking to him, while again insisting he wanted to hammer out a “plan to stop Putin” with the United States before any talks happen.

Mr. Zelenskyy was due to meet Vance — who was to attend the Munich conference alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other top US officials — and also to redouble his efforts for more help from Europe to reach a “just peace”.

Mr. Trump said Thursday that “high-level people” from Moscow, Kyiv and Washington would meet in Munich on Friday — but the Ukrainian Presidency said it did not expect to take part in talks with Russian officials and that “for the moment there is nothing on the table”.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz rejected any “dictated peace” and his defence minister, Boris Pistorius, called it “regrettable” that Washington was already making “concessions” to the Kremlin.

The Ukraine war has been Europe’s largest military conflict since World War II, and the dramatic events of this week sparked warnings with ominous historical references.

Kallas’ use of the term “appeasement” had a special resonance as conference host city Munich is where in 1938 Britain, France and Italy agreed that Czechoslovakia must surrender border regions to Nazi Germany.

Mr. Trump in social media posts has hailed the “great history of our nations”, the United States and Russia, recalling that both fought together in World War II.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga said that “the Russians are trying to prolong the post-Yalta mentality, with a few people sitting around the table and dividing the world,” referring to the conference in Crimea of the British, Soviet and US leaders at the end of World War II.

Security was tight at the annual meeting in the Bavarian state capital, with police on heightened alert a day after a car-ramming attack injured 30 people, with an Afghan asylum seeker arrested at the scene.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday (February 1, 2025) that excluding his country from talks between the U.S. and Russia about the war in Ukraine would be “very dangerous” and asked for more discussions between Kyiv and Washington to develop a plan for a ceasefire.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, Mr. Zelenskyy said Russia does not want to engage in ceasefire talks or to discuss any kind of concessions, which the Kremlin interprets as losing at a time when its troops have the upper hand on the battlefield.

He said U.S. President Donald Trump could bring Russian President Vladimir Putin to the table with the threat of sanctions targeting Russia’s energy and banking system, as well as continued support of the Ukrainian military.

“I think these are the closest and most important steps,” he said in the interview in the Ukrainian capital that lasted for more than an hour.

Mr. Zelenskyy’s remarks followed comments Friday (January 31, 2025) by Mr. Trump, who said American and Russian officials were “already talking” about ending the war. Mr. Trump said his administration has had “very serious” discussions with Russia, but he did not elaborate.

“They may have their own relations, but talking about Ukraine without us — it is dangerous for everyone,” Mr. Zelenskyy said.

He said his team has been in contact with the Trump administration, but those discussions are at a “general level,” and he believes in-person meetings will take place soon to develop more detailed agreements.

“We need to work more on this,” he said, adding that Mr. Trump understandably appeared to be focused on domestic issues in the first weeks after his inauguration.

The nearly three-year war in Ukraine is at a crossroads. Mr. Trump promised to end the fighting within six months of taking office, but the two sides are far apart, and it is unclear how a ceasefire deal would take shape. Meanwhile, Russia continues to make slow but steady gains along the front, and Ukrainian forces are enduring severe manpower shortages.

Most Ukrainians want a pause in fighting to rebuild their lives. The country faces near-daily Russian attacks on homes, and strikes on power systems have plunged entire cities into darkness.

Millions of Ukrainians have been displaced, unable to return to their homes after vast tracts of the country’s east have been reduced to rubble. Nearly a fifth of Ukraine is now occupied by Russia. In those areas, Moscow-appointed authorities are swiftly erasing any hint of Ukrainian identity.

With Mr. Trump back in the White House, Ukraine’s relationship with the U.S., its largest and most important ally, is also at a tipping point.

In an initial phone call with Mr. Trump during the presidential campaign, Mr. Zelenskyy said, the two agreed that if Mr. Trump won, they would meet to discuss the steps needed to end the war. But a planned visit by Mr. Trump’s Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, was postponed “for legal reasons” Mr. Zelenskyy said. That was followed by a sudden foreign aid freeze that effectively caused Ukrainian organizations to halt projects.

“I believe that, first and foremost, we (must) hold a meeting with him, and that is important. And that is, by the way, something that everyone in Europe wants,” Mr. Zelenskyy said, referring to “a common vision of a quick end to the war.”

After the conversation with Mr. Trump, “we should move on to some kind of format of conversation with Russians. And I would like to see the United States of America, Ukraine and the Russians at the negotiating table. … And, to be honest, a European Union voice should also be there. I think it would be fair, effective. But how will it turn out? I don’t know.”

Mr. Zelenskyy cautioned against allowing Mr. Putin to take “control” over the war, an apparent reference to Russia’s repeated threats of escalation during President Joe Biden’s administration.

Without security guarantees from Ukraine’s allies, Mr. Zelenskyy said, any deal struck with Russia would only serve as a precursor to future aggression. Membership in the NATO alliance, a longstanding wish for Kyiv that Moscow has categorically rejected, is still Mr. Zelenskyy’s top choice.

NATO membership is the “cheapest” option for Ukraine’s allies, and it would also strengthen Mr. Trump geopolitically, Mr. Zelenskyy argued.

“I really believe that these are the cheapest security guarantees that Ukraine can get, the cheapest for everyone,” he said.

“It will be a signal that it is not for Russia to decide who should be in NATO and who should not, but for the United States of America to decide. I think this is a great victory for Mr. Trump,” he said, evidently appealing to the President’s penchant for winners and business deals.

In addition, Mr. Zelenskyy said, Ukraine’s 800,000-strong army would be a bonus to the alliance, especially if Mr. Trump seeks to bring home U.S. troops who are stationed overseas.

Other security guarantee proposals should be backed up by sufficient weapons from the U.S. and Europe, and support for Kyiv to develop its own defense industry, he said.

Mr. Zelenskyy also said a French proposal to put European forces in Ukraine to act as a deterrent against Russian aggression is taking shape, but he expressed scepticism, saying many questions remained about the command-and-control structure and the number of troops and their positions. The issue was raised by French President Emmanuel Macron and with Mr. Trump, he said.

“I said in the presence of the two leaders that we are interested in this as a part of the security guarantee, but not as the only guarantee of safety,” he said. “That’s not enough.”

He added: “Imagine, there is a contingent. The question is who is in charge? Who is the main one? What will they do if there are Russian strikes? Missiles, disembarkation, attack from the sea, crossing of the land borderline, offensive. What will they do? What are their mandates?”

Asked if he put those questions directly to Mr. Macron, he smiled and said: “We are still in the process of this dialogue.”

Following a statement by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio that the war has set Ukraine back by 100 years, Mr. Zelenskyy urged Mr. Rubio to visit Ukraine.

Mr. Rubio “needs to come to Ukraine, first of all, to see what Russia has done,” the Ukrainian President said. “But also to see what the Ukrainian people did, what they were able to do for the security of Ukraine and the world, as I said, and just talk to these people.”