KYIV: The European Union signalled its long-term support for Ukraine on Monday as its foreign ministers convened in Kyiv for a historic first gathering outside the bloc's borders.
The meeting came as disagreements grow among EU members over support for Ukraine and as Kyiv's forces make limited gains in a high-stakes counteroffensive against Russian troops.
"We are convening in a historic meeting of the EU foreign ministers here in Ukraine, candidate country and future member of the EU," the bloc's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said.
The purpose of the meeting was to "express our solidarity and support to the Ukrainian people", he said, acknowledging that the gathering "does not have the aim of reaching concrete conclusions and decisions".
Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba hailed the discussions as an important signal of European support.
"For the fist time ever the foreign affairs council is going to sit down outside of its current borders -- outside the borders of the European Union -- but within future borders of the European Union," Kuleba told reporters alongside Borrell.
The EU's 27 nations have remained broadly united through the 19 months of war on their support for Ukraine, hitting Russia with 11 rounds of sanctions and spending billions of euros on arms for Kyiv.
Germany's Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock called for the creation of a strategy to insulate Ukraine from the fallout of a feared campaign of Russian strikes on Ukraine's energy grid in the coming months as temperatures drop.
"Ukraine needs a winter protection plan of air defence, generators and a strengthening of the energy supply," she said.
"We saw last winter the brutal way in which the Russian president wages this war, with targeted attacks on critical infrastructure such as power plants."
Ukrainian authorities say Russia has launched systemic aerial attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure, a strategy that last year left millions without heating or water.
The foreign ministers of Hungary, Poland and Latvia did not attend the summit, a Ukrainian government official said.
On Monday, Ukraine's Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said Russia shelled the city of Kherson in the south, critically wounding a civilian and two police.
Police also said a civilian was killed by Russian fire in the nearly encircled town of Avdiivka in the war-battered Donetsk region in the east.
Separately, Kyiv's intelligence service said that Ukraine's drones at the weekend had struck a plant that produces cruise missiles in Smolensk. — AFP
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