Ukraine will ask allies to boost its air defenses at a meeting in Germany, Zelenskyy says

Russian servicemen attend a combat training for assault units in an undisclosed location, Jan. 4

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he will again call on allies to boost its air defenses at last week’s meeting in Germany, as U.S. President-elect Donald Trump takes over later this month with a vow to end the almost three-year war quickly.

Zelenskyy said that dozens of partner countries will participate in the meeting of the Ramstein group at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Thursday, “including those who can help boost our capabilities not only to defend against missiles but also against guided bombs and Russian aviation.”

“We will discuss this with them and continue to persuade them,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address on Saturday. “The task remains unchanged: strengthening our air defense.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin will attend the meeting. Biden was originally scheduled to attend the October summit in Ramstein but it was postponed because of response to Hurricane Milton that battered the U.S.

In its last few weeks in office, the Biden administration was pressing to send as much military aid as possible to Ukraine before Trump is sworn in Jan. 20.

Trump claimed during his election campaign that he could end the war in one day and his comments have put a question mark over whether the United States will continue to be Ukraine’s biggest — and most important — military backer.

Zelenskyy said last week that Trump is “strong and unpredictable,” and those qualities can be a decisive factor in his policy approach to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Russia controls about one-fifth of Ukraine, and capitalized last year on weaknesses in Ukraine’s defenses to slowly advance in eastern areas despite high losses of troops and equipment. The war’s trajectory isn’t in Ukraine’s favor. The country is shorthanded on the front line and needs continued support from its Western partners.

Zelenskyy said Saturday that Russian and North Korean troops had suffered heavy losses in the fighting in Russia’s Kursk region.

“In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka, in the Kursk region, the Russian army lost up to a battalion of North Korean infantry soldiers and Russian paratroopers,” Zelenskyy said. “This is significant.”

Zelenskyy said last month that 3,000 North Korean troops had been killed and wounded in Kursk, where Ukrainian forces launched an incursion in August, dealing a blow to Russia’s prestige and forcing it to deploy some of its troops from a slow-moving offensive in eastern Ukraine.

The incursion didn’t significantly change the dynamic of the war, and military analysts say Ukraine has lost around 40% of the land it initially captured.

In other developments, nine people were wounded in a Russian guided bomb attack on the border town of Semenivka in Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region on Saturday evening, local officials said.

Moscow sent 103 drones into Ukraine overnight into Sunday, Ukrainian officials said. According to Ukraine’s air force, 61 drones were destroyed and 42 were lost likely due to electronic jamming. VOLODYMR YURCHUK & ELISE MORTON, KYIV, MDT/AP