Ukraine war briefing: Zelenskyy arrives in US for crucial visit to rally support for Kiev | Ukraine

Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in the US on Sunday for a crucial visit to present Kiev’s plan to end the two-and-a-half-year war with Russia. The Ukrainian president will present his proposals — which he calls a “victory plan” — to President Joe Biden, as well as presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, and will also attend sessions at the UN General Assembly. The visit comes after a summer of fierce fighting that has seen Moscow advance rapidly in eastern Ukraine and Kiev hold large swaths of Russia’s Kursk region. It also comes as Kiev has been pressuring the West for weeks to allow it to use supplied long-range weapons to strike targets deep inside Russia — so far to no avail.

The Ukrainian president urged his partners to help achieve “a shared victory for a truly just peace,” in a message on X with his late-night video address. “This fall will determine the future of this war,” Zelenskyy said in his speech from a plane. Ukrainian media later reported that he landed in New York. He will also visit Washington later in the week.

Zelenskyy began his trip with a visit to a munitions factory in Pennsylvania, where some of the most urgently needed ammunition for Ukraine is produced. Rep. Matt Cartwright, a Democrat who was among those who met Zelenskyy at the Army’s munitions plant in Scranton, said the president had a simple message: “Thank you. And we need more.” The Scranton plant is one of the few in the country that produces 155mm artillery shells and has ramped up production over the past year. Ukraine has already received more than 3 million of them from the U.S.

British Foreign Secretary David Lammy indicated that delicate negotiations with the White House are underway to allow Ukraine to use Storm Shadow missiles in Russia. He argued that it was a time for “guts and courage”The apparent encouragement for Biden comes just over a week after Lammy and Prime Minister Keir Starmer visited the US president at the White House but failed to resolve the sticking point between the two countries. Speaking at a fringe event at the Labour party conference in Liverpool on Sunday, Lammy said it was “a critical time for courage and for grit and for patience and for steadfastness on behalf of allies who stand with Ukraine”.

Fake news websites registered in the UK that appear to be trustworthy British sites are reportedly spreading disinformation about Western companies operating in Ukraine. The suspected Russian propaganda operation has prompted calls from MPs for a change in the law to force UK-registered news websites to disclose their ownership, as is done in the EU. Although the sites – londoninsider.co.uk and talk-finance.co.uk – are in English and registered in the UK, their output has been picked up and distributed in Ukraine, where British media has a reputation for trustworthiness and credibility. The use of the sites has been highlighted by a US company, Sarn, which operates in the energy and military hardware sectors in Ukraine. The company said articles on the two sites falsely accused it of arms trafficking, judicial fraud and embezzlement.

Russia has launched new attacks in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, hitting apartment buildings. At least 21 people have been injured in a second consecutive nighttime attack, authorities said.The bombs fell Saturday night in the Shevchenkivsky district, north of the center of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, local Governor Oleh Syniehubov said.

A firefighter has been killed by a Ukrainian drone in the Russian-controlled Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine, the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry said on Sunday.. The drone’s explosives detonated when Vyacheslav Glazunov, 33, was extinguishing a fire in the Novoaidar district caused by fallen drones, the ministry reported on Telegram. Two more firefighters were injured, it added.