Western leaders are arriving in Kyiv this weekend ahead of Ukraine’s Independence Day celebrations on Monday.
As preparations for the event geared up, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with his Finnish counterpart Alexander Stubb in the capital on Sunday, where the pair hosted a roundtable meeting on joint defence cooperation.
Zelenskyy also welcomed US Senators Richard Blumenthal and James Lankford to Kyiv. The president said he briefed the pair on the continuing ballistic missile threat from Russia and the need for improved air defences.
European Council President António Costa is also expected to be heading to Ukraine along with other international guests including Luxembourg Prime Minister Luc Frieden.
Zelenskyy rejects call for election
Preparations for the annual celebration come as the Ukrainian leader on Sunday reportedly rejected a surprise call from his former Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov for a war-time presidential election.
“I believe that in a war like this, elections as such are a huge risk. Elections right now are a tsunami for the country that will split Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said in a media briefing.
“If we want to destroy the country, then we can move in the direction of elections during these times of war,” he added.
Zelenskyy had fired the popular minister earlier this year, sparking protests and a political crisis in Kyiv.
Ukraine shifts focus
On the military front, Ukraine is now shifting focus to Russian e-commerce marketplace Ozon on the back of its military campaign against the online retailer Wildberries.
On Sunday, Ukrainian forces struck an Ozon facility for the second time this weekend, with a hit on a logistics site in the city of Orenburg, according to local authorities.
“Several UAVs were shot down over the special economic zone, where our industrial facilities are located. Fortunately, no one was injured,” Orenburg Mayor Albert Yumadilov said in a post on Telegram.
“Debris fell onto the grounds of the Ozon logistics complex, causing a fire which was quickly extinguished by staff from the Ministry of Emergency Situations,” he added.
Ukraine also targeted an Ozon logistics hub in Russia’s Samara region on Saturday, Kyiv and the company said.
“We evacuated more than 500 employees within minutes,” Ozon said, adding that there were an unspecified number of injuries and that “warehouse operations have been suspended indefinitely.”
It comes as the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence announced a new strategy to target the company, which it said houses “dual-use goods.”
“After Ukrainian units hit 15 of Wildberries’ largest logistics hubs, it’s now Ozon’s turn,” the ministry wrote on social media.
“Systematic strikes on storage centers holding dual-use goods are disrupting the enemy’s logistics and negatively impacting Russia’s economy as a whole,” it added.
Wildberries
Ukraine, which is celebrating its National Flag Day on Sunday, has launched repeated attacks on Wildberries warehouses in recent weeks as part of a campaign Kyiv says is a response to Moscow’s strikes on Ukrainian companies such as Nova Poshta.
Kyiv also hopes the attacks will disrupt the Russian economy and the flow of supplies to Vladimir Putin’s military.
Zelenskyy has said Wildberries is involved “the supply of military goods” and is “big money for Russia,” and that strikes on the firm’s warehouses have already caused billions of dollars in losses.
The company was founded in 2004 by Russian billionaire Tatyana Kim and has gone on to become Russia’s largest online marketplace.
Russian forces strike Ukraine’s railways
Russian forces have also carried out a number of attacks on Ukraine’s railway network on Sunday, authorities have said.
Russia struck a train at Lymanivka station in the northeastern Ukrainian region of Kharkiv, killing one person and injuring four others, according to Mykola Kalashnyk, Ukraine’s Minister of Infrastructure.
“Due to the threat of a drone strike, the train was stopped in good time and the passengers were evacuated. Most people, along with the train crew, were at a safe distance from the railway infrastructure; however, some remained near the train,” he wrote on Telegram.
In the Odesa region of southern Ukraine, a Shahed attack drone also hit a passenger train travelling from Zhytomyr to Odesa, per Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, the head of the state-run Ukrainian Railways rail operator.
“The Ukrainian Railways monitoring team issued an evacuation order in good time, and the train was brought to an emergency halt on the track – thus, everyone is safe: the passengers, the train crew and the locomotive crew,” he said, adding that 593 passengers, including 15 children, had been on board the service.
Ukraine’s ‘two major challenges’
For Zelenskyy, two key challenges remain in the fight against Moscow: Russia’s ballistic missiles and funding for Ukraine’s defence.
The president has long called for more interceptor missiles to tackle the constant threat of ballistic projectiles and has stressed that while local air defences have improved against other kinds of missiles, “ballistic missiles are ballistic missiles.”
Zelenskyy now wants to secure 300 US-made Patriot interceptors as part of a winter package to help defend Ukraine’s skies.
“I would very much like to believe that we can find a way to access some small percentage of U.S. stockpiles – say, 5% or 10%,” he wrote on X on Sunday. “We are ready to pay for those supplies”.