The Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, arrived in Singapore on Saturday to participate in the Shangri-La Dialogue conference. His schedule included a meeting with the United States Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, to discuss the challenges faced by his country. To assure safety measures, Zelenskiy reached the conference grounds with a well-guarded motorcade.
In a statement released on social media channel X upon his arrival, Zelenskiy voiced his intention to bolster support from Asia-Pacific regions for a peace summit intended to take place in Switzerland between June 15th and 16th. He took a critical stance towards Russia, which launched an invasion in Ukraine in 2022, arguing that global security cannot be achieved if a country disregards international law, acknowledged boundaries, and the principles of the UN Charter. He further accused Russia of employing hunger, darkness, and nuclear extortion.
Zelenskiy’s itinerary includes meetings with Singapore’s President Tharman Shanmugaratnam and Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, President José Ramos-Horta from Timor-Leste, Secretary Austin, and potential Singaporean investors. An American official confirmed that Zelenskiy along with the Ukrainian defence minister Rustem Umerov would converse with Austin to discuss the situation on the ground in Ukraine and to solidify America’s commitment to helping Ukraine counter the sustained aggression from Russia.
In a brief shared by the International Institute of Strategic Studies, the organizing body of the security conference, it was revealed Zelenskiy would partake in a discussion on Sunday titled “Re-Imagining Solutions for Global Peace and Regional Stability”.
On Wednesday, Zelenskiy disclosed that Russia is attempting to interrupt the proposed peace summit in Switzerland. He aims to bolster support for the retraction of Russian forces and to regain Ukraine’s pre-1991 borders at the summit. He made his second visit to Asia since Russia’s incursion into Ukraine in February 2022: the first being his attendance at the G7 meetings in Japan in May 2023.
Ukraine has been under renewed attacks from Russia in recent months, with increased missile attacks and minor gains made by Russian forces in the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine, even as Ukraine’s allies expedite the supply of ammunitions and additional weaponry. Worthy of note is that Russia has abstained from attending the Shangri-La Dialogue since its invasion of Ukraine.
This year, the United States authorised weaponry provisions totalling $61 billion to Ukraine, which include ATACMS precision ballistic missiles and Patriot missiles, some already received by Ukraine. The US officials relayed that President Joe Biden authorized Ukraine to utilise these American weapons to hit any Russian targets across the border involved in assaults on the Ukrainian city, Kharkiv.
Despite the warning about the potential nuclear war threat from Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, he cautioned NATO members against permitting Ukraine to launch their weapons into Russia. This week, Sweden announced a security package valued around $1 billion, inclusive of armoured vehicles and, unprecedentedly, airborne warning and control aircrafts capable of detecting airborne targets at exceptional ranges.
Austin, speaking at the International Institute of Strategic Studies’ Shangri-La conference in Singapore, emphasised that the international support given to Ukrainian forces in their two-year resistance against the Russian invasion signifies international solidarity against acts of aggression. Shangri-La conference will conclude on the 2nd of June.
On the other hand, Russia initiated another massive attack on Ukraine on Saturday, with missiles and drones causing damage to the energy facilities in five different regions across the country. Ukrenergo, Ukraine’s national grid operator, stated that the attack had impacted energy facilities in the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Kyrovohrad and the Ivano-Frankivsk regions.
Since March, Russia has intensified its assaults on Ukraine’s power infrastructure, leading to the majority of the thermal and hydropower generation being shut down, causing power outages, and forcing a surge in electricity imports. DTEK, the largest private energy-generating company in Ukraine, reported significant damage to its two thermal power plants due to these attacks. Amongst the 100 combined missiles and drones launched, 35 missiles and 46 drones were reportedly brought down by the Ukrainian air defence.
According to information shared by local authorities, numerous locations were scene to firefighting operations, in the aftermath of the bombings. It’s necessary to note that there is currently no news regarding injuries or casualties. – Reuters
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