During a visit to Norway on 20–21 October, a Ukrainian team held meetings with representatives of the defence industry. In particular, they met with one of the leading companies, Kongsberg, with which Ukraine is working on protecting its skies, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told journalists in an audio comment.
As of now, work is continuing on three projects. There are positive results.
“The first project: the result is strong, in my view; we will get it in a month and a half to two months, and we will get it to protect us from Shaheds. The second project: I will say less about this project for now. Let everything arrive — everything we have worked out. The second project is FREYJA (a Ukrainian-European anti-ballistic programme. – Ed.). We are working on it; you know a lot about it. We are grateful for the consistent work of our Norwegian partners in strengthening this project — FREYJA; we believe in this success. And there is a third project on air defence and communications, so to speak — satellite communications. More on that a little later. I am grateful for the result,” the head of state said.
The President also thanked Norway’s parliament for the meeting and for the broad coalition of different parties rallying around Ukraine. They discussed an energy support package, the return of Ukrainian children, the construction of bomb shelters and other programmes.
“Separately, I will say honestly that it is important for us to close all the problematic issues, all the shortfalls, in this financial year. You know that we have worked quite well with the European Union. We are also grateful to our partners. But we still have a shortfall of €3.5 billion, that is $4.1 billion. We are working on this. I raised this issue with our Norwegian colleagues. The issue is being taken on board; we are in dialogue, so to speak. We hope our partners will help us. I am grateful to the King for the audience. Thank you to the Norwegian people for their support,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
- The President and his team were in Norway for two days. On the first day of the visit, a summit took place with the Norwegian Prime Minister, the President of Finland and the American negotiator Steve Witkoff. Witkoff took the results of the work to St Petersburg today and presented them to Putin. Following the talks, the United States informed Ukraine that the Russians had agreed to a trilateral meeting of the teams. The last such talks took place back in February.