Ukraine Russia war latest: Downing of Kremlin plane cause of ‘great concern’ as EU leaders meet to ‘crush’ Putin

Some 20 European leaders will gather in Paris on Monday to send Russian President Vladimir Putin a message of European resolve on Ukraine and counter the Kremlin’s narrative that Russia is bound to win a war now entering its third year, France said.

French President Emmanuel Macron has invited his European counterparts to the Elysee palace for a working meeting announced at short notice because of what his advisers say is an escalation in Russian aggression over the past few weeks.

“We want to send Putin a very clear message, that he won’t win in Ukraine,” a presidential adviser told reporters in a briefing. “Our goal is to crush this idea he wants us to believe that he would be somehow winning.”

After initial successes in pushing back the Russian army, Ukraine has suffered setbacks on eastern battlefields, with its generals complaining of shortages of arms and soldiers.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, British Foreign Minister David Cameron, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, as well as leaders from Scandinavian and Baltic countries, are scheduled to attend the conference.

The United States will be represented by U. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Jim O’Brien, and Canada by Defence Minister Bill Blair.

French officials said the security conference in Munich earlier this month, which coincided with the death of Putin’s most formidable domestic opponent Alexei Navalny, was all about “doom and gloom”, and that Macron was keen to dispel that.

“We’re neither doomy nor gloomy,” the French adviser said. “We want Russia to understand that. Russia will have to count on us all collectively to end this war and restore Ukraine‘s rights.”

However, the adviser said the working meeting will not be an occasion to announce new weapon deliveries to Ukraine but more to brainstorm ways to be more efficient on the ground, as well as increase coordination between allies and Ukraine.

The French officials said Russia had shown renewed aggressiveness in recent weeks, such as Putin’s flight on a nuclear-capable bomber, in what they view as an attempt to intimidate Europeans at a time US support was thrown into doubt by the presidential election.

Russia launched 14 attack drones and a barrage of missiles at Ukraine overnight, with air defence systems destroying nine drones as well as three guided missiles over the Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions, Ukraine‘s air force said on Monday.

Russia also launched two S-300 missiles from anti-aircraft missile systems and one air-to-surface Kh-31P missile, the air force said on the Telegram messaging app. It was not clear what happened to the missiles and drones that were not downed.

“31,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed in this war. Not 300,000, not 150,000… (Russian president Vladimir) Putin is lying there… But nevertheless, this is a big loss for us,” he said in a news conference at the Ukraine Year Forum in Kyiv.

Mr Zelensky said Russia’s casualties – both injured and dead – during the invasion stood at 500,000, of which 180,000 were Russian soldiers killed in the war, according to Kyiv’s estimates.

Speaking from the Ukrainian capital at an event to mark the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Rustem Umerov said in the “mathematics of war” there are deadly consequences when promised military support “does not constitute delivery”.

He said it was also unprecedented in history that a country was expected to fight against an enemy with such a discrepancy in air power and military budget. It comes just a week after Kyiv was forced to pull its forces out of Avdiivka in the east of the country.

Soldiers on the ground told The Independent they blamed the withdrawal on the crippling rationing of ammunition and lack of air defence against a ferocious assault by Russia who dropped hundreds of bombs in the final push for the town.

“Fifty per cent of commitments are not delivered on time. Whatever commitments do not come on time means we lose people, we lose territories,” Mr Umerov said grimly, in response to a question posed by The Independent.

President Volodymyr Zelensky warned on Sunday that Ukraine had reached the hardest stage for maintaining unity which was crucial for the war effort against Russia.

“Now is the most difficult moment for our unity, and if we all fall apart, from the outside and God forbid inside, then this will be the weakest moment. It has not happened yet,” the Ukrainian leader told a news conference in Kyiv.

Ukraine has a “clear” plan for a new counteroffensive against Russian forces, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday, adding that he could not disclose details publicly.

Zelensky told a news conference in the capital Kyiv that troop rotations were critically important for the war effort and that Ukraine needed to better prepare its reserve forces.

The body of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has finally been handed over to his mother, his spokesperson has said.

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Guy Walters joins a squad of postmen, IT workers and drivers being turned into frontline soldiers to find out why Operation Interflex – which has prepared more than 30,000 ordinary citizens to fight Putin – could be the training model for our own citizen army

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It noted that 30 per cent of English local authorities “regularly failed to provide homelessness data” for those on the scheme.

Its report said the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) explained that the data it received from more than 70 per cent of local authorities was “representative and sufficient to track trends so that it could respond accordingly with policy interventions”.

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