Ukraine’s leader courts allies as Russia strikes hometown

President Volodymyr Zelensky worked on Thursday to add political momentum to Ukraine’s recent military gains against Russia, while missile strikes that caused flooding near his hometown demonstrated Moscow’s determination to reclaim the battlefield advantage.

A week after a Ukrainian counteroffensive caused Russian troops to retreat from a north-east region, Mr Zelensky met with European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen during her third wartime visit to Kyiv.

Ms von der Leyen publicly conveyed the wholehearted support of the 27-nation bloc and wore an outfit in Ukraine’s national colours.

“It’s absolutely vital and necessary to support Ukraine with the military equipment they need to defend themselves. And they have proven that they are able to do this, if they are well equipped,” she said.

Air raid sirens blared twice in Kyiv during Ms von der Leyen’s meeting with Mr Zelensky, a reminder that Russia has long-range weapons that can reach any location in Ukraine even though the capital has been spared attacks in recent weeks.

Ukrainian officials said Russian missiles late on Wednesday struck a reservoir dam near Kryvyi Rih, Mr Zelensky’s birthplace and the largest city in central Ukraine, flooding over 100 homes.

Russian military bloggers charged the attack was intended to flood areas downstream where Ukrainian forces made inroads as part of their counteroffensive.

The head of the local government on Thursday reported a new attack on the dam and said emergency crews were working to prevent more water from escaping.

The first attack so close to his roots angered Mr Zelensky, who said the strikes had no military value.

“In fact, hitting hundreds of thousands of ordinary civilians is another reason why Russia will lose,” he said.

The UN General Assembly said it would vote whether to make a procedural exception that would allow Mr Zelensky to deliver a pre-recorded address to a meeting of world leaders next week.

The proposed document to be voted on Friday would have the 193-member body express concern that leaders of “peace-loving sovereign states” cannot participate in person “for reasons beyond their control owing to ongoing foreign invasion, aggression, military hostilities that do not allow safe departure from and return to their countries, or the need to discharge their national defence and security duties and functions”.

On Thursday, the UN atomic agency’s 35-nation Board of Governors passed a resolution calling on Moscow to immediately end its occupation of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine.

Fears of a possible radiation disaster have surrounded the power station, Europe’s largest nuclear plant, as Russia and Ukraine accused each other of shelling the plant and nearby areas in the past weeks.

The document, which conveyed a markedly harsher tone than previous statements by IAEA officials, passed with 26 votes. Russia and Beijing voting against it, while seven Asian and African countries abstained.

The resolution calls on Russia to return control of the plant to Ukraine and to “immediately cease all actions against, and at, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and any other nuclear facility in Ukraine”.

As Mr Zelensky courted allies with the optimism from the events of the last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin met one-on-one with Chinese President Xi Jinping at a regional security summit in Uzbekistan.

Mr Xi’s government, which said it had a “no limits” friendship with Moscow before the February 24 invasion of Ukraine, has refused to criticise Russia’s military actions.

At the start of their talks on Thursday, Mr Putin thanked Mr Xi and said he was ready to discuss unspecified “concerns” by China about Ukraine.

“We highly appreciate the well-balanced position of our Chinese friends in connection with the Ukrainian crisis,” Mr Putin said, facing Mr Xi across a long table.

Mr Putin and Mr Xi’s formal meeting on the sidelines of the eight-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a security alliance created as a counterweight to US influence, provided a comparison to Mr Zelensky’s encounter with the president of the European Union’s executive commission.

The EU Parliament on Thursday completed the drawn-out process of approving a five billion-euro (£4.4bn) preferential loan to Ukraine, the key part of a nine billion-euro (£7.8bn) aid package to offset the cost of war.

Mr Zelensky insisted his allies needed to provide more weapons, saying the only way to guarantee the security of Ukrainians is to “close the sky” over the country with Western-supplied air defence systems provided by Western allies.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock was pressuring Chancellor Olaf Scholz to decide whether to supply advanced tanks to Ukraine soon, while its counteroffensive gained traction.

“In the decisive phase that Ukraine currently finds itself, I also don’t believe that it’s a decision which can be delayed for long,” Ms Baerbock said.