Ukraine president visits Sweden for first time since war with Russia

The Swedish government has announced that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will arrive in the nation on Saturday for his first official travel abroad since Russia’s annexation of Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014.

Harpsund, located around 120 kilometers west of Stockholm, is where Zelenskyy is scheduled to meet with Swedish government officials, according to the report. At a nearby palace, he will also have a meeting with King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden.

Sweden has reversed its long-held policy of military neutrality in order to provide arms and other help to Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. It has also submitted an application to join NATO but has yet to hear back.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with senior military leaders in the city of Rostov-on-Don, located in southern Russia not far from the border with Ukraine.

According to the Kremlin, Putin met with senior military leaders at the headquarters of Russia’s Southern Military District to hear updates on the situation in Ukraine from Valery Gerasimov, the commander in charge of Moscow’s activities in Ukraine.

Although state media showed a video that looked to be recorded at night and showed Gerasimov greeting Putin and taking him into a structure, the exact times of his visit remained unknown. The meeting itself took place in private.

Putin’s visit marked the first time he had been to Rostov-on-Don since the June attempted rebellion by the Wagner mercenary group.

Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin frequently blamed Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov for cutting off supplies to his Ukrainian rebels during the brief uprising in June.

Although Prigozhin maintained that Putin was not the target of the rebellion, he did say that Gerasimov and other high-ranking officials were being removed because they were mismanaging the conflict in Ukraine.

In a counteroffensive move this week, Ukraine retook the village of Urozhaine in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk area on Wednesday.

On Thursday, the commander of a Russian unit vying to keep Urozhaine in Russian control called for a front freeze, saying his forces were hopeless versus Ukraine.

Is it possible to military overthrow Ukraine? According to a video Alexander Khodakovsky sent on Telegram, the answer is “no” right now and in the foreseeable future.

Ukraine’s air force claimed Saturday morning that it had shot down 15 of 17 Russian drones that had been aiming for northern, central, and western Ukraine the previous night.

According to Serhii Tiurin, deputy governor of the western Khmelnytskyi district, an attack left two persons injured and dozens of buildings destroyed.

There were no deaths reported in the Russian drone attack on an infrastructure facility in the Zhytomyr region’s northwest, according to the region’s governor, Vitalii Bunechko.