Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy held talks on October 10 with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris as part of a push to secure additional military and financial aid.
The visit comes as Kyiv confronts relentless daily air strikes and a grinding Russian offensive in the east that is making incremental progress.
Zelenskiy met with Macron after talks in London with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, who was in Kyiv last week after taking over at the helm of the military alliance.
Zelenskiy said on X that he "outlined the details" of his plan to defeat Russian forces in his meeting with Starmer and Rutte and added that he and the other leaders agreed to work on the plan together.
Zelenskiy said they discussed transatlantic cooperation and further reinforcing Ukraine militarily. He gave no details but said that “these are the steps that will create the best conditions for restoring a just peace.”
Zelenskiy's trip comes after a summit of the Ramstein group of Ukraine's main backers was canceled at short notice when U.S. officials, including President Joe Biden, were forced to abandon travel plans as southern states braced for Hurricane Milton as it bore down on the Florida coast.
Zelenskiy's press service said he would start negotiations "with key partners on whom the military component of our strengthening depends."
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A spokesman for Starmer told journalists that the British prime minister would "reiterate the UK's iron-clad support for Ukraine in the face of ongoing Russian aggression."
The Ukrainian leader is also scheduled to travel to Rome for meetings with Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni on October 10 and Pope Francis at the Vatican on October 11.
Macron's meeting with Zelenskiy "will provide an opportunity for the president to reaffirm France's determination to continue to support, in the long run and with all its allies, an infallible support for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people," the French presidency said in a statement.
Zelenskiy is then due in Germany for consultations with Chancellor Olaf Scholz on On October 11.
The Ramstein group summit planned for October 12 as well as a so-called Quad meeting of the United States, Britain, France, and Germany for talks on Ukraine, were put off after U.S. President Joe Biden canceled his trip to Europe because of Hurricane Milton.
Zelenskiy is seeking to secure as much military and financial aid as possible ahead of next month's U.S. presidential election.
The United States has been Ukraine's main backer and by far the main contributor in terms of financial and military aid, but a Donald Trump victory in the elections could cast doubt about Washington's continued support for Kyiv.
On October 9, Zelenskiy attended a summit with Balkan leaders in Croatia, where he stressed the importance of European unity for a durable peace.
"No one in Europe needs to be reminded how precious peace is, especially here in the Balkans. What happens here in the Balkans and what happens in Ukraine in a way determines the stability of the whole of Europe," Zelenskiy said.
Summit participants passed a declaration condemning Russia's aggression against Ukraine and supporting Zelenskiy's peace efforts, Ukraine's membership in NATO, and its reconstruction after the war.
On the battlefield, outmanned and outgunned Ukrainian forces were fighting Russian troops inside the strategic city of Toretsk in the eastern region of Donetsk after abandoning Vuhledar, another strategic hub in the region, last week.
Russian forces, meanwhile, shelled Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhya regions, wounding several people and causing further destruction, regional authorities reported.
Separately, Ukraine's air force reported that it had downed 41 Russian drones out of 62 launched early on October 10 at targets in the Odesa, Poltava, and Donetsk regions.