BRUSSELS — European heads of state are gearing up for a difficult two-day gathering where support for Ukraine is at the top of the agenda, but internal divisions threaten any significant action toward Kyiv.

The meeting comes at a crunch time for Ukraine, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hops across the world seeking further aid in the fight against Russia’s invasion. He started the week in Argentina, then travelled to the United States and landed in Norway on Wednesday.

Throughout all of his stops, he delivered one message: cutting support to Ukraine is a gift to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.

“We must make decisions,” European Council President Charles Michel, who will be chairing the summit, told CNBC Tuesday.

“It is our duty to make sure we protect the interest of the European Union by supporting Ukraine.”

Some 50 billion euros ($54.43 billion) are on the table. The European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, proposed in June to send this sum to Ukraine between 2024 and 2027, but opposition from Hungary, whose prime minister met with Vladimir Putin in person in October, is blocking the disbursement.

EU leaders will also discuss whether to start official negotiations with Ukraine for the nation’s potential future accession to the bloc. Hungary has, once again, expressed reservations. A handful of other EU member states, such as Italy, have also raised issues over enlarging the EU.

Speaking to CNBC on Tuesday, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Olga Stefanishyna said that the start of official negotiations would be a “major guarantee of Ukraine sustainability.”

“We need these messages to keep on being mobilised,” she added.

Nearly two years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, western support for Kyiv is flattening. There has been a nearly 90% drop in newly committed aid to Ukraine between August and October, compared with the same period of 2022, data from the Kiel Institute showed last week.

“Ukraine now increasingly relies on a core group of donors such as the U.S., Germany, and the Nordic and Eastern European countries that continue to pledge and deliver both financial aid and important weaponry,” the institute said.

The recent war between Palestinian militant group Hamas and Israel has also drifted attention away from Kyiv, while inflationary pressures have limited the ability of western governments to provide more aid. At the same time, Russia retains an advantage when it comes to military strength.

“Russia will likely continue to have a considerable advantage in terms of the availability of military equipment, munitions, and manpower, at least in the first half of 2024,” Andrius Tursa, Central and Eastern Europe Advisor at consultancy firm Teneo, said.

“Having mobilized its economy for the war, Russia is rapidly increasing its military output, in addition to supplies from North Korea and Iran. Moscow is also keeping up military recruitment to compensate for vast manpower losses without triggering visible public discontent.”

Recent surveys suggest that the majority of the Russian population is still in favor of Putin’s actions in Ukraine, although support is gradually declining. According to a poll carried out by the Levada Center and issued earlier this month, 74% of those surveyed support fully or to some extent the war in Ukraine.

After months of apparent reluctance to engage with Kyiv on the same level as Moscow, China said Wednesday that it will send special representatives to Ukraine and hold talks with all parties on reaching an end to the conflict.

Chinese state media said that President Xi Jinping told his Ukrainian counterpart President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a phone call — the first that the leaders have held since the war began in February 2022 — that Beijing will focus on promoting peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.

State media added that Beijing would make efforts for a cease-fire to be reached as soon as possible, in order to end what China called a “crisis” rather than a conflict.

Commenting on the call, which he described as “long and meaningful,” Zelenskyy said he believed it would “give a powerful impetus to the development of our bilateral relation.”

The timing of the call — and China’s decision to send emissaries to Ukraine — has raised eyebrows among political and defense analysts, particularly as Ukraine is widely known to be preparing to launch a large-scale counteroffensive against Russian forces in a bid to retake territory in the east and south.

A number of analysts believe China is eager to halt the conflict before there’s a massive escalation in the fighting as the spring’s muddy season passes, allowing offensive operations to begin again in earnest, and as Ukraine receives more military hardware from its Western allies.

“The spring months are basically coming to an end and it’s time for counter attacks to begin so I think China wants to be seen as immediate mediator before that escalation,” Max Hess, fellow in the Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told CNBC Thursday.

That’s a view shared by Oleksandr Musiyenko, a military expert and head of the Centre for Military and Legal Studies in Kyiv. He was, however, surprised at the timing of China’s call, as he expected it might wait and see how the counteroffensive proceeded before intervening.

“I was confident that China would wait for the results of Ukrainian counteroffensive and would then probably propose something [on a cease-fire and peace talks],” he told CNBC Thursday.

“But I think the Russians are afraid of the future Ukrainian counteroffensive, they are afraid that they will lose some territory that they are occupying right now … so I think that they asked Xi to call Zelenskyy to ask him to stop this counteroffensive,” he said.

China has been eager to position itself as a peace broker to end the war, but has appeared to be allied with Moscow throughout, refusing to condemn the invasion, holding frequent calls with Moscow and having no direct diplomatic contact with Ukraine during the war — until now.

And when Xi visited Russia in March, he said he would hold a phone call with Kyiv but no arrangements had been forthcoming, making yesterday’s announcement even more surprising.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg made that point on Thursday when he “welcomed” the call between Xi and Zelenskyy, but he noted it does not change the fact China still hasn’t condemned Russia’s invasion.

The Kremlin, for its part, said it welcomes anything that could bring the end to the conflict closer, but said that it still needs to achieve the stated aims of its so-called “special military operation,” such as the complete takeover of the Donbas in eastern Ukraine.

Analysts are generally skeptical about China’s positioning of itself as a mediator and its ability to help bring an end to the war, questioning how much sway Beijing has over Moscow.

Musiyenko said China doesn’t appear to understand the conflict, noting it’s “unbelievable” for Beijing “to call the war a political crisis.”

He was afraid that any cease-fire or peace agreement deal put forward by China would include Russian-proposed conditions such as territorial boundary changes.

It wasn’t lost on analysts that China’s call on Wednesday took place just days after a diplomatic gaffe last week, when its ambassador to France, Lu Shaye, told French media that countries that were part of the Soviet Union, like Ukraine, lacked status in international law.

The comment sparked indignation in the EU as well as Ukraine and other ex-Soviet states. China was forced to issue a statement distancing itself from Lu’s comments, insisting that “China respects the status of the former Soviet republics as sovereign countries after the Soviet Union’s dissolution.”

After the incident, Timothy Ash, senior emerging markets sovereign strategist at BlueBay Asset Management, said the timing of Xi’s call to Zelenskyy cannot be overlooked.

“The timing looks very suspicious, coming after that incredible diplomatic faux pas/catastrophe by the Chinese ambassador to Paris, by commenting to the effect that post Soviet states have not right to exist,” Ash said in emailed comments.

“These may have been his actual views about Ukraine but in one interview I think he offended all of the 14 non-Russian states that secured independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. And this includes the states in Central Asia and Transcaucasia that China relies on for critical commodities. They must be absolutely furious, as is most of the post Communist space, ex Russia, in Emerging Europe,” he noted.

Ash said the gaffe could have caused immeasurable damage to bridge-building with former Soviet states and showed a lack of understanding that could be shared more widely by those in Beijing, though it was only shown by one official.

“This one comment has undermined 30-odd years of oh-so-careful Chinese diplomacy in the region,” Ash said, adding that “actually it shows that Chinese officials fundamentally don’t understand Europe.”

SINGAPORE — Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that the world will face a “severe food crisis,” with Russia’s war on his country dragging on, as he virtually addressed the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Saturday.

Zelenskyy told delegates that his country was unable to export enough food because of Russia’s blockade at Black Sea ports, which was preventing exports from being shipped to other countries.

“The world will face an acute and severe food crisis and famine,” he said, addressing 575 delegates from 40 countries at the dialogue, Asia’s top defense conference.

Ukraine along with Russia are among the largest producers and exporters of wheat and other essential foods like other grains and oils.

“The food [crisis] touches Asia, Europe and Africa. Russia has blocked the Black Sea. Prices are rising. Russia is violating international law,” Zelenskyy said in a question-and-answer session following his speech.

Zelenskyy said that Russia’s war on Ukraine is a threat to the system of international law — beyond the impact on his country.

Zelenskyy said that Russia has embarked on a “disinformation campaign” and has alleged that its war on Ukraine is “ostensibly something about NATO … about the intention of the West to somehow advance in Europe.”

“But in reality, Russia’s war against Ukraine is not only about Europe, it is about globally important things,” he said.

Russian leadership “strives to discard” all the historical achievements of humankind, especially the system of international law,” said Zelenskyy, calling on countries to ‘break the ability” of Russia to block seas and the freedom of navigation.

“If there had been no international law, and the big fish ate the small fish and the small fish ate shrimps, we would not have existed,” he said, invoking the words of Singapore’s founder Lee Kuan Yew.

Addressing the audience from an undisclosed location in Kyiv, Zelenskyy said that Ukraine will “certainly win” this war that Russia has started, in an occasionally impassioned 20-minute address, which the delegates responded to with lengthy applause. The three-day security dialogue is being held for the first time after a two-year hiatus because of the pandemic.