PARIS (AP) — Paris Saint-Germain coach Luis Enrique may be unsure how to approach the second leg of the Champions League playoff against Monaco on Wednesday.
Although PSG is 3-2 ahead, protecting leads is not his style. But attacking too much against a technically strong Monaco side could expose his team to costly counterattacks.
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Monaco's Folarin Balogun celebrates with teammates after scoring his side's second goal during the first-leg of the Champions League playoff soccer match between Monaco and Paris Saint-Germain in Monaco, Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Philippe Magoni)
Monaco's Folarin Balogun, second right, scores the opening goal during the first-leg of the Champions League playoff soccer match between Monaco and Paris Saint-Germain in Monaco, Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Philippe Magoni)
FILE - Monaco's Ansu Fati, right, is congratulated by Monaco's Takumi Minamino after scoring his sides first goal during the Champions League opening phase soccer match between Club Brugge and Monaco at the Jan Breydel Stadium in Bruges, Belgium, Thursday, Sept. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Omar Havana, file)
PSG's head coach Luis Enrique reacts during the French League One soccer match between Paris Saint-Germain and Metz in Paris, France, Saturday, Feb. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Emma Da Silva)
Coach Sébastien Pocognoli's Monaco has 13 goals in the past six games. Although two of those have been defeats, the attack is looking much sharper.
Monaco went 2-0 up inside 20 minutes against PSG last week, only for clumsy defending to allow PSG back into the game. Against Lens on Saturday, Monaco overturned a 2-0 deficit with a three-goal burst in 10 second-half minutes.
PSG's defense looks weaker than last season — conceding against Monaco after just 55 seconds — and is not helped by uncertainty over the goalkeeper.
“The team can improve defensively at the moment,” Luis Enrique said at a pre-game news conference. “When you are 2-0 down within 20 minutes it normally ends in disaster. But we have shown this season and last that we can overcome any difficulty."
Since Gianluigi Donnarumma’s departure, Luis Enrique has alternated between Matvei Safonov and summer signing Lucas Chevalier.
Pairing Ansu Fati and Folarin Balogun in attack could be Pocognoli’s best option.
Fati has nine goals in 20 games, including a fine lob in against Lens on Saturday.
The former Barcelona teenage prodigy has been hampered by minor injuries this season. He went on as a substitute against Lens but Pocognoli is likely to start him against PSG.
Balogun has also dealt with injuries but finally seems fully fit. The American forward's two goals against PSG last week and his opportunist strike against Lens showed he is back in form.
Their movement up front, allied to the runs of attacking midfielder Maghnes Akliouche, may stretch PSG's defense and leave space for midfielders behind.
Fati and Akliouche can dribble at speed, while Balogun’s versatility allows him to play wide or through the middle.
Rapid counterattacks are Monaco's strength.
When Monaco beat PSG 1-0 in Ligue 1 in November the goal came from a quick break. On Saturday, the third goal against Lens was a slick counterattack ending with Fati's lob.
PSG showed vulnerability to quick balls played behind the full backs when it lost at Rennes 3-1 this month; while Monaco's first goal last Tuesday saw left back Caio Henrique finding space behind right back Achraf Hakimi and Aleksandr Golovin crossing for Balogun to head in.
Henrique and right back Vanderson both like to attack. This may force Luis Enrique to instruct his own attacking full backs, Hakimi and left back Nuno Gomes, not to push up too much.
PSG will be without star forward Ousmane Dembélé
The Ballon d’Or winner came off with a calf injury last Tuesday and missed Saturday’s home game against Metz in Ligue 1.
Dembélé has been hampered by injuries and has hardly played a full season during his career, with setbacks affecting his six seasons at Barcelona before he joined PSG.
“I don’t know how long (Dembélé will be out for), it depends on certain things," Luis Enrique said. “We don’t want to take any risks. It’s not serious but we need to be patient.”
Fabián Ruiz remains sidelined. The Spain midfielder has not played for PSG since hurting his left knee on Jan. 20 in the 2-1 defeat at Sporting Lisbon.
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
Monaco's Folarin Balogun celebrates with teammates after scoring his side's second goal during the first-leg of the Champions League playoff soccer match between Monaco and Paris Saint-Germain in Monaco, Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Philippe Magoni)
Monaco's Folarin Balogun, second right, scores the opening goal during the first-leg of the Champions League playoff soccer match between Monaco and Paris Saint-Germain in Monaco, Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Philippe Magoni)
FILE - Monaco's Ansu Fati, right, is congratulated by Monaco's Takumi Minamino after scoring his sides first goal during the Champions League opening phase soccer match between Club Brugge and Monaco at the Jan Breydel Stadium in Bruges, Belgium, Thursday, Sept. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Omar Havana, file)
PSG's head coach Luis Enrique reacts during the French League One soccer match between Paris Saint-Germain and Metz in Paris, France, Saturday, Feb. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Emma Da Silva)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared Tuesday that Russia has not “broken Ukrainians” nor triumphed in its war, four years after an invasion that has severely tested the resolve of Kyiv and its allies and fueled European fears about the scale of Moscow’s ambitions.
In a show of support, more than a dozen senior European officials headed to the Ukrainian capital to mark the grim anniversary of the conflict, which has killed tens of thousands of people, upended life for millions of Ukrainians, and created instability far beyond its borders.
Zelenskyy said his country has withstood the onslaught by Russia’s bigger and better equipped army, which over the past year of fighting captured just 0.79% of Ukraine’s territory, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank. Russia now holds nearly 20% of Ukraine.
“Looking back at the beginning of the invasion and reflecting on today, we have every right to say: We have defended our independence, we have not lost our statehood,” Zelenskyy said on social media, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin has “not achieved his goals.”
“He has not broken Ukrainians; he has not won this war,” Zelenskyy said.
Despite the show of defiance, Ukraine has struggled to hold off Russia's onslaught, and the war has brought widespread hardship for Ukrainian civilians. Russia’s aerial attacks have devastated families and denied civilians power and running water.
As the war of attrition enters its fifth year, a U.S.-led diplomatic push to end the largest conflict on the continent since World War II appears no closer to finding compromises that might make a peace deal possible.
Negotiations are stuck on what happens to the Donbas, eastern Ukraine’s industrial heartland that Russian forces mostly occupy but have failed to seize completely, and the terms of a postwar security arrangement that Kyiv is demanding to deter any future Russian invasion.
At a makeshift memorial in Kyiv’s central square, where thousands of small flags and portraits show photos of fallen soldiers, Zelenskyy said he would like U.S. President Donald Trump to visit and witness for himself Ukrainian suffering.
“Only then can one truly understand what this war is really about,” Zelenskyy said.
Trump, who once vowed to end the war in a day, has repeatedly changed his tone toward Putin and Zelenskyy over the past year: sometimes criticizing the Ukrainian leader's negotiating position while reaching out to the Russian leader and at others lashing out at Putin for heavy barrages and appearing more sympathetic to the Ukrainian predicament.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that the invasion would continue in pursuit of Moscow's goals. They include a demand that Ukraine renounce its bid to join NATO, sharply cut its army, and cede vast swaths of territory.
Zelenskyy said he expected a fresh round of U.S.-brokered talks with Russia within the next 10 days.
The number of soldiers killed, injured or missing on both sides could reach 2 million by spring, with Russia sustaining the largest number of troop deaths for any major power in any conflict since World War II, a report last month from the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated.
European leaders see their countries’ own security at stake in Ukraine amid concerns that Putin may target them next.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz wrote on X that “for four years, every day and every night has been a nightmare for the Ukrainians — and not just for them, but for us all. Because war is back in Europe.”
“We will only end it by being strong together, because the fate of Ukraine is our fate,” he added.
Putin believes that time is on the side of his bigger army, Western officials and analysts say — and that Western support will trail off and that Ukraine’s military resistance will eventually crumble. Already Trump has ended new military aid to Ukraine — though other NATO countries now buy American weapons and give them to Kyiv.
But French President Emmanuel Macron described the war was “a triple failure for Russia: military, economic, and strategic.”
The war “has strengthened NATO — the very expansion Russia sought to prevent — galvanized Europeans it hoped to weaken, and laid bare the fragility of an imperialism from another age,” Macron said on X.
The European Union has also sent financial aid, but has sometimes met with reluctance from members Hungary and Slovakia.
While NATO countries have come to Ukraine’s aid, Russia has been helped by North Korea, which has sent thousands of troops and artillery shells; Iran, which has provided drone technology; and China, which the United States and analysts say has provided machine tools and chips.
Among the European officials visiting Kyiv on Tuesday were the president of the European Council, Antonio Costa, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and Finnish President Alexander Stubb, as well as seven prime ministers and four foreign ministers.
The only American listed among the official guests in Kyiv ceremonies was Lt. Gen. Curtis Buzzard, a U.S. officer who represents NATO in Ukraine.
British Armed Forces Minister Al Carns said Russia's war on Ukraine was “the most defining conflict” in decades.
The war has brought a “revolution in military affairs,” especially through the rapid development of drone technology by both sides, according to Carns. Drones now cause the vast majority of battlefield casualties, he said.
Both sides face challenges in finding enough troops and are increasingly turning to uncrewed aerial drones that take the killing to areas far from the front lines, the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies said in its annual report on the global military situation.
“Given both sides’ reliance on external support for materiel, decisions taken in foreign capitals will play an important role in shaping the war’s trajectory,” the think tank added.
The United Kingdom on Tuesday announced a new package of military and humanitarian support for Ukraine, including sending teams of British military medics to instruct their Ukrainian counterparts.
The cost of rebuilding war-battered Ukraine would amount to almost $588 billion over the next decade, according to World Bank, the European Commission, the United Nations and the Ukrainian government.
That is nearly three times the estimated nominal GDP of Ukraine for last year, they said in a report Monday.
Associated Press reporters across Europe contributed to this story.
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
European Commissioner for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy Henna Maria Virkkunen, left, and European Commissioner for Prosperity and Industrial Strategy Stephane Sejourne, center, stand after an address by Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy via video link, during an extraordinary plenary session held for the fourth anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, at the European Parliament in Brussels, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Marius Burgelman)
A woman place flowers at the memorial to the fallen Ukrainian soldiers on Independence Square to mark the fourth anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion in Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Office, Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, left, European Council President Antonio Costa, center, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen pass by St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)
A woman place flowers at the memorial to the fallen Ukrainian soldiers on Independence Square to mark the fourth anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion in Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, centre, is welcomed by Ukraine's Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, centre right, as she arrives in Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. (Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix via AP)
From left: Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, Sweden's Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and Norway's Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere talk in the train during their journey from Poland's Medyka to Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. (Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix via AP)
Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, centre, is welcomed by Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his wife Olena Zelenska, left, before a service at St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. (Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix via AP)
