After making a passionate speech at the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, on Thursday Volodymyr Zelensky will meet President Joe Biden. Ukraine’s president is seeking support for what he calls his “victory plan”. His objectives are clear. Mr Zelensky wants restrictions lifted on the use of Western long-range missile systems to strike inside Russia, the speeding-up of deliveries of weaponry and a commitment to accelerated membership of NATO.

Mr Zelensky will argue that the coming months will be critical for the outcome of the war. Russian attacks on energy infrastructure mean his country is facing a bleak winter of power cuts. His troops are losing territory in the Donbas region. Mr Zelensky hopes that getting the backing he needs will help him negotiate a ceasefire on relatively favourable terms. The territory Ukraine has grabbed in Russia’s Kursk region will also provide crucial leverage. Mr Biden’s decision will depend on what legacy he wants to leave.

Two long-serving liberal G7 leaders beset by domestic troubles get together on Thursday. Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, and Emmanuel Macron, the French president, will hold meetings in Ottawa and Montreal, two Canadian cities. It is the first bilateral visit by a French president to Canada for a decade. While in Quebec, Mr Macron will also meet François Legault, the province’s prime minister, and promote French, the mother tongue.

Behind the formal words, both leaders have an unspoken shared agenda. They once embodied youth and novelty, and are seeking to hold the liberal centre. Faced with populism on the right (in Canada) and on both the left and hard right (in France ), Mr Trudeau and Mr Macron are unpopular leaders in charge of shaky governments. France’s failure to ratify a trade deal between Canada and the European Union may still grate in Ottawa, but they will have plenty to share when it comes to their respective political troubles at home.

Russian Energy Week, an annual conference, began on Thursday in Moscow. For years the companies attending did business in the West: Gazprom, a state-owned Russian firm, was once the European Union’s biggest gas supplier. But since the war in Ukraine began, their focus has shifted to redirecting their exports to countries that are more sympathetic to the Kremlin.

Their success has been mixed so far. Chinese and Indian refiners are guzzling shipments of crude that Western buyers spurn. But Gazprom is struggling to turn a profit : the pipelines to China that it needs to replace its exports to Europe will take years to build. Novatek, Russia’s largest producer of liquefied natural gas, is crippled by sanctions.

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, has said that energy ministers from the BRICS—a bloc consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—will gather on the sidelines of the conference. Energy companies will be hoping that the meetings yield more than just talk.

Jim Chalmers, Australia’s treasurer (as the country’s finance minister is known), meets his Chinese counterpart in Beijing on Thursday. Mr Chalmers is the first treasurer to visit China since 2017, when relations started to sour. A deal promoting bilateral economic co-operation was suspended in 2021. But its renewal in June was the latest sign of what Australia’s centre-left Labor government calls a “stabilisation” of the relationship.

China has lifted almost all the trading restrictions it imposed on Australian goods in a diplomatic quarrel in 2020. Mr Chalmers will campaign for the only remaining ban, on lobster, to be removed. China, meanwhile, may raise concerns about Australia’s increasingly strict rules on foreign investment. The Labor government has blocked Chinese investments in critical-mineral companies and is overhauling foreign-investment laws to bolster “economic security”, as Mr Chalmers puts it. Trade between the two countries has boomed despite the tensions, but on security the pair remain deeply divided.

On Thursday America’s Food and Drug Administration will evaluate KarXT, a novel antipsychotic treatment for schizophrenia developed by Karuna Therapeutics, a lab owned by Bristol Myers Squibb. If approved, it would be the first new drug for schizophrenia in decades. The distressing disorder afflicts about 24m people globally and reduces life expectancy by up to 15 years

KarXT works by targeting “muscarinic” receptors in the brain, altering the release of dopamine. This approach offers relief to patients without the severe side effects of existing treatments, which often leave them listless and prone to rapid weight gain. That would allow patients to live more independent lives. It would also help health services deal with some of the challenges associated with schizophrenia. Strained budgets have left many countries, including America, with a severe shortage of psychiatric beds. The hope is that this novel drug will reduce the need for psychiatric care and mental health professionals.