Kyiv residents line up outside the Ukrainian capital’s ”points of invincibility”, set up to help people cope with power and heating outages, Kyiv, Ukraine, 17 January 2026. Photo: EPA / Maria Senovilla
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has decided not to travel to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he told journalists on Tuesday, despite the fact that he was expected to meet US President Trump there later this week.
Replying to questions from reporters, Zelensky confirmed that he had decided to remain in Kyiv to oversee efforts to restore power and heating to the large swathes of the population left without essential utilities following repeated Russian missile and drone strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
“Meetings are not the main priority right now,” Zelensky said of his decision, though he added that his plans “could change at any moment” noting that the US plans for the country’s post-war reconstruction and details of long-discussed US security guarantees for Ukraine were both “very important documents”.
The World Economic Forum began on Monday evening and is due to end on Friday. On Tuesday, The Moscow Times reported the arrival of Russian special envoy Kirill Dmitriev who is expected to meet with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, to continue discussions on ending the war in Ukraine. Davos will mark the fifth meeting between Dmitriev and Witkoff.
The Ukrainian delegation won’t be the only notable absence in Davos, however, with Bloomberg reporting on Monday that Denmark had decided to boycott the forum in response to Trump’s increasingly aggressive calls for Copenhagen to cede control of Greenland to the US, citing unspecified security concerns.
