Paris conference racks up £800 million in donations to support Ukraine

Dozens of countries and international organisations have pledged hundreds of millions of pounds to help keep Ukraine powered, fed and warm during winter.

An international donor conference in Paris racked up substantial promises of financial support worth around £800m.

Ukraine had made an impassioned plea for aid which they said could pressure Russia into pursuing peace. Conference donors strongly condemned the Kremlin’s savaging of power stations, water facilities and other essential services in Ukraine.

French president Emmanuel Macron, the conference host, denounced the bombardments as war crimes, asserting that Moscow had resorted to pounding civilian infrastructure because its troops suffered setbacks on the battlefields and Russia’s “military weaknesses have been exposed to all”.

Russia “has chosen a cynical strategy, aiming to destroy civilian infrastructure in order to put Ukraine on its knees,” Macron said. “The objective is clear: respond to military defeats by spreading terror among civilians, try to break the back as it can’t maintain the front.”

Successive waves of Russian cruise missiles and exploding drones have destroyed about half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, Kyiv says.

Moscow argues its pounding of critical infrastructure is aimed at weakening Ukraine’s ability to defend itself and stem the flow of western weaponry into the country.

President Zelensky, who joined the conference of donors via video link, said some 12 million Ukrainians – roughly one-quarter of the country’s population before Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February – were living with power outages.

The European Union’s chief executive, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, announced funding for the purchase of 30 million energy-saving light bulbs that Ukraine requested to reduce pressure on its power grid.

Ms Von Der Leyen said the Russian missile and drone bombardments were intended to kill Ukrainian morale, but added: “Russia will fail because the Ukrainian spirit remains unyielding and unbroken.”

Without reliable power and other essential services, life for many is becoming a battle for survival. “Globally, we need everything,” said Yevhen Kaplin, who heads Proliska, a Ukrainian humanitarian group providing cooking stoves, blankets and other aid to front-line regions and away from the battlefields.

With “the shelling, the missiles strikes and strikes on the infrastructure, we can’t say whether there will be gas tomorrow, we can’t predict whether to buy gas stoves or not,” he said. “Every day the picture changes.”

The Paris meeting was attended by 46 countries and 24 international organisations.

As winter bites, “we need to do whatever we can to help improve conditions in Ukraine and also help them to fight off the Russian invaders,” he said. “We’re here for them as long as it takes.”

Air raid sirens wailed across Ukraine on Tuesday after warnings by the country’s leaders that Russia could launch a new wave of missile and drone strikes, but there were no immediate reports of attacks.

Russia has carried out several waves of attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure since October, causing power outages across the country.

Several minutes after the first air raid alerts were issued on Tuesday, there had been no reports of missiles being fired at Ukraine.

Ukrainian media said the alerts may have been triggered by MiG fighter jets that took off from Ryazan, near Russia’s border with Ukraine, and flew towards Belarus.

Additional reporting from agencies