Zelenskyy visits Canada to seek further military support for Ukraine
Canada plans to produce millions of drones over the next two years and send a third of them to Ukraine, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Thursday as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pressed allies for more support against Russia’s invasion.
Ukraine is under mounting pressure from Russia’s intensifying air campaign that uses ballistic missiles and jet-powered drones to pierce defenses. Moscow’s attacks have targeted Ukraine’s power grid ahead of winter in what officials say is part of its campaign to demoralize civilians.
Carney said Canada’s armed forces currently have only about 2,000 drones but will need millions in the years ahead. He said contracts announced Thursday would increase the Canadian military's drone fleet tenfold.
“Importantly, one-third of all the drones we manufacture will go to support Ukraine’s defense of its homeland,” Carney said during Zelenskyy’s three-day visit to Canada.
Zelenskyy said deeper drone cooperation would give Ukraine greater capacity to finance its defense while giving Canada access to technology proven in modern warfare.
Carney also announced a package of critical air-defense interceptors for Ukraine worth 350 million Canadian dollars ($254 million) to be delivered to Ukraine through a U.S. mechanism. Zelenskyy called the package “crucial,” saying air-defense systems remain in short supply worldwide.
Canada will also provide more than 430 million Canadian dollars ($312 million) in loan guarantees to help Ukraine buy natural gas ahead of winter and contribute to Ukraine’s Energy Security Fund.
Carney said Canada would continue backing Ukraine after the fighting ends. “Ukrainians helped build Canada, and Canadians will help rebuild Ukraine,” he said, adding that when peace comes Canada’s approach would be to “deter and fortify” rather than simply trust Russia.
Zelenskyy said Russia had changed its tactics ahead of winter and that Ukraine needed to adapt its defenses. He said the best outcome would be to end the war through diplomacy but that Ukraine needed to become stronger before meaningful negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“We need to be strong, not to be weak,” Zelenskyy said, adding that Ukraine needed a “strong and lasting peace.”
Zelenskyy said Thursday that he did not expect strong negotiations with Russia during its election period but anticipated meeting U.S. officials in New York at the end of September. He said his national security advisers were in daily contact with their American counterparts about preparations for a possible trilateral meeting.
Zelenskyy arrived Wednesday night in Calgary, Alberta, a day after a drone incursion forced authorities to close Moldova's airspace, delaying his flight to Norway.
The aerial drone battle between Russia and Ukraine has grown in scale since Russia’s all-out invasion in February 2022. Ukraine’s neighbors Romania and Moldova, and other European countries, have reported repeated drone incursions.
A Russian attack on the Ukrainian city of Pavlohrad killed four people and left more than 60 injured, Dnipropetrovsk regional head Oleksandr Ganzha said on Telegram on Thursday afternoon.
Also on Thursday, a Russian drone attack on the Kyiv region killed one person and injured two others, regional head Tymur Tkachenko said.
Russian forces launched 149 drones, many of them jet-propelled, at Ukraine overnight, Ukraine’s air force said Thursday.
Meanwhile, one person was killed and six others were injured in Ukrainian drone strikes in the Belgorod border region, local officials said Thursday.
A Ukrainian sea drone wounded 28 people, including two children, on the waterfront in the Russian city of Sochi, local officials said. They said that beach infrastructure had been damaged but did not provide further details.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense said Thursday that its forces shot down 448 Ukrainian drones overnight. The drones were destroyed over 13 Russian regions, as well as the annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and the Black and Caspian seas, the ministry said.
Falling debris from a Ukrainian drone set fire to a home in Russia’s southwestern Voronezh region, killing one woman and wounding two other people, local Gov. Alexander Gusev said Thursday.
Ukrainian forces struck eight Russian infrastructure targets supporting the war effort over the past 24 hours, including a refinery in the Yamalo-Nenets region and a port in Dagestan, Zelenskyy said Thursday.
Targets in the Moscow, Voronezh, Astrakhan and Bryansk regions were also hit, he said.
Those targets were hundreds of kilometers (miles) apart, underlining the scope and scale of Ukraine’s domestically developed long-range drone technology that has unsettled Russia.
The previous day, Ukrainian forces struck an oil refinery more than 3,000 kilometers (1,800 miles) from Ukraine in Siberia, Ukraine’s General Staff said, confirming earlier reports.
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