{"id":2857,"date":"2026-04-06T01:51:35","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T01:51:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/2857\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T01:51:35","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T01:51:35","slug":"ukraines-zelensky-meets-syrias-new-leader-in-damascus-pushes-military-deals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/2857\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine’s Zelensky meets Syria\u2019s new leader in Damascus, pushes military deals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky<\/a> met with Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa on Sunday, after arriving in Damascus<\/a> alongside Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan.<\/p>\n

The visit follows Zelensky’s trip to Turkey<\/a> on Saturday and a Gulf tour last week against the backdrop of the war in the Middle East<\/a>, where he sought to clinch security deals and exchange Ukrainian drone expertise for air defence missiles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Zelensky said in an X post that the two leaders “went over the circumstances of Russia<\/a>‘s war against Ukraine — I am grateful for the support. There is strong interest in exchanging military and security experience.”<\/p>\n

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“We also touched on Ukraine’s role as a reliable supplier of food products and discussed joint opportunities to strengthen food security across the region,” he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ukraine, which is battling relentless Russian drone and missile barrages daily, urgently needs US Patriot air defence ammunition and fears supplies may sink due to the Middle East war.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kyiv has therefore sought to leverage its expertise in countering Russian drones<\/a>, similar to those Iran<\/a> has used in retaliatory attacks across Gulf nations.<\/p>\n

Read moreZelensky hails ‘historic’ defence agreements with Gulf states<\/a><\/p>\n

Last week, Zelensky visited several Middle Eastern countries and signed defence agreements with Qatar and Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n

Russia was a key ally of Sharaa’s predecessor Bashar al\u2011Assad, now exiled in Moscow, during Syria<\/a>‘s 14\u2011year civil war, supporting him with airstrikes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the new Syrian leader, who once commanded rebels against Assad, has appeared to maintain balanced relations with Moscow.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In January, he met President Vladimir Putin and so far has not asked Russia to withdraw from its military<\/a> bases on Syrian soil.<\/p>\n

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa on Sunday, after arriving in Damascus alongside Turkish…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[733,796,5,72,738,731,308,586],"class_list":{"0":"post-2857","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-ahmed-al-sharaa-abu-mohammed-al-jolani","9":"tag-drones","10":"tag-france","11":"tag-middle-east","12":"tag-military","13":"tag-syria","14":"tag-ukraine","15":"tag-volodymyr-zelensky"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}