Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy traveled to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to discuss releasing prisoners of war from Russia and pushing forward a peace plan.
Zelenskyy's meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman comes one day after the prince hosted Vyacheslav Volodin, chairman of Russia's lower house of parliament, the Duma, among other Russian officials.
Crown Prince Mohammed seeks to position himself as an intermediary in peace talks between Ukraine and Russia and has previously mediated prisoner swap negotiations.
While Riyadh seeks to mediate this conflict, it is still aligned with Russia on energy policies through the OPEC bloc.
Zelenskyy wrote on the X platform that Ukraine continues to "rely on Saudi Arabia's ongoing active support" to move his "peace formula" forward.
The peace formula is a 10-point-plan that seeks to expel all Russian forces from Ukrainian territory and hold Russia accountable for war crimes, among other things.
Moscow rejects these ideas.
Zelenskyy further wrote, "The kingdom's leadership has already contributed to the release of our people. I am confident that this meeting will also yield results."
As Zelenskyy met with the crown prince, Russia pushed Ukrainian troops back in eastern Ukraine. Military analysts say Russia holds the advantage of higher troop numbers and weapons supplies, at a time when Kyiv awaits more aid from Western allies.
Although Ukraine has suffered losses, Ukraine's military said Tuesday it shot down 11 Russian drones and two guided missiles that Russia launched in overnight attacks.
The Ukrainian air force said Russia used a total of 13 drones and five missiles in its latest round of aerial assaults targeting the Kharkiv, Sumy, Dnipropetrovsk, Khmelnytskyi and Kirovohrad regions.
There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties.
European leaders meet
Zelenskyy said in his nightly address Monday that a meeting of European leaders included discussion of Ukraine's military arsenal, its ability to produce weapons, the supply of weapons from allies to Ukraine, and continuing support for Ukraine's battle against the Russian invasion.
"Everything we do together to defend against Russian aggression adds real security to our nations for decades to come," Zelenskyy said. "Because each of Russia's losses and each of Russia's defeats teaches Russia and any other enemy of Europe and the free world at large that aggression does not and cannot yield results."
French President Emmanuel Macron convened the meeting with 20 European leaders in Paris and said, "Russia cannot and must not win that war."
Macron said that while there are no plans in place to send Western troops to fight in Ukraine, the possibility remained.
"There's no consensus today to send in an official, endorsed manner, troops on the ground. But in terms of dynamics, nothing can be ruled out," Macron said in a news conference.
Several European leaders pushed back on the idea Tuesday, including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
"What was agreed from the beginning among ourselves and with each other also applies to the future, namely that there will be no soldiers on Ukrainian soil sent there by European states or NATO states," Scholz told journalists.
Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said their governments had no plans to send troops to Ukraine.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said in a statement that Hungary would send neither troops nor weapons to Ukraine.
In Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said sending Western troops to Ukraine is "absolutely not in the interest" of those countries.
"In that case, we would need to talk not about the probability, but about the inevitability [of a direct conflict]," Peskov told reporters.
Macron said on Monday that European officials agreed that they should be prepared for a possible attack by Russia in the coming years and that more efforts were needed to help Ukraine financially and militarily.
"We all agree we don't want to go to war with the Russian people, but we're determined to keep escalation under control," Macron said, adding that the meeting was meant to see how those present could "do more in terms of military support and budget support."
After the meeting, the Netherlands announced it will contribute $108 million to a Czech initiative to buy ammunition for Ukraine from countries around the world. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte expressed hope that other countries will follow his country's example.
Fiala, also speaking after the Paris meeting, said some 15 countries had shown interest in the initiative, which has focused on finding urgently needed artillery ammunition for Ukraine on world markets.
Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa said countries at the Paris meeting had asked their defense ministers to come up with plans in the next 10 days to deliver more munitions to Ukraine.
Peace plan
The Kremlin said earlier Monday that Ukraine's call for peace talks without Russia was ridiculous, a day after Zelenskyy expressed hope at a forum in Kyiv that a peace summit being planned by Switzerland will address Kyiv's vision for ending the war.
Zelenskyy told reporters Sunday he hopes the peace summit will take place in the spring. "We must not lose this diplomatic initiative," he said. "We will offer a platform on which [Russian President Vladimir Putin] can agree that he lost this war and that it was a mistake. A big mistake."
Kremlin spokesperson Peskov told reporters, "We have repeatedly said that this is a strange format, to say the least, because certain peace plans are being implemented without the participation of Russia, which in itself is frivolous and even laughable."
Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy's chief of staff, has floated the possibility that Ukraine and its foreign partners could invite Russia to the future summit to discuss an end to Moscow's invasion on Kyiv's terms.
Zelenskyy's peace formula calls for restoring Ukraine's territorial integrity and a total withdrawal of Russian troops.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has experienced setbacks on the battlefield. Ukrainian troops pulled out of a village west of the recently Russian occupied city of Avdiivka in the east of the country, an army spokesperson said Monday.
Another setback for Kyiv's soldiers was in the village of Lastochkyne. They retreated to nearby villages to hold the line there, Dmytro Lykhovii, a spokesperson for one of the Ukrainian troop groupings, said Monday on national television.
Lykhovii said the Ukrainian troops were outnumbered and overwhelmed by Moscow's military might, and Ukraine chose to pull them out of the village and mount a defense elsewhere.
Russia's Ministry of Defense said its troops had "liberated" Lastochkyne.
The latest setback for Ukraine's military happened on Tuesday. The Ukrainian military said that it withdrew forces from the villages of Sieverne and Stepove, which are also near Avdiivka.
Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
