The leaders of France, Germany and Italy – Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz and Mario Draghi – transferred this Thursday in kyiv to the Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelenski, a message of support from Europe in his current confrontation with Russia.
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The Presidents traveled together by train to kyiv, where they were joined by Romanian President Klaus Iohannis in a show of the European Union’s support for Ukraineinvaded on February 24 by Russian troops.
(Russia proposes to Ukraine to ‘raise white flag’ and allow evacuations)
This trip “is a message of European unity to the Ukrainian men and women, of support to talk about the present and the future at the same time, because we know that the coming weeks will be very difficult,” Macron summed up in a few words on the platform.
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, seconded him in affirming that the objective of his trip to
kyiv is to ensure solidarity and continued support for Ukraine in the face of the Russian invasion.
“But we want not only to show solidarity, but also to ensure that the aid we are organizing – financial, humanitarian, but also when it comes to weapons – will continue. And that we will continue with it for as long as it takes for the struggle for Ukraine’s independence. Scholz said.
Ukrainian aspirations to the European Union
The European leaders are scheduled to meet with Zelenski, who has repeatedly asked for support to enter the European Union. The trip takes place at a key moment, a few days before the European Council of the next 23 and 24, in which Ukraine expects a very strong symbolic gesture from the European Union.
The Elysee – seat of the French Presidency – insisted that it is necessary to find “a balance between the Ukrainian aspirations” and those of other candidate countries for entry into the EU stuck in their negotiations, in addition to the fact that “we must not destabilize or fracture the EU”.
The visit of these European leaders will also serve to take stock of the latest developments in the situation in Donbas, as well as the situation of the Ukrainian army, according to Italian government sources.
Before seeing the Ukrainian president, Macron, Scholz, Draghi and Iohannis traveled to the city of Irpin, where they were able to see the enormous destruction caused by the Russian offensive. As in neighboring Buch, nearly 300 civilians were discovered dead in Irpin following the withdrawal of Russian troops at the end of March.
There, Emmanuel Macron spoke of “war crimes” after verifying the destruction and having verified “the traces, the stigmas of barbarism” in Irpin, “a place that has been destroyed”. He recalled that the Russian Army in this war has also occupied “other cities where massacres were perpetrated.
We have seen the first traces of what are war crimes.” Shortly after the arrival in kyiv of European leaders Olaf Scholz, Emmanuel Macron and Mario Draghi, the anti-aircraft alert sounded in the Ukrainian capital, according to media reports.
The correspondent in kyiv of the German network NTV pointed out that it is common in that capital to hear the anti-aircraft alarm two or three times a day, but that now it had not been activated for 48 hours.
At the time of the connection, he specified that the alarm had already been sounding between fifteen and twenty minutes and that the German chancellor, the French president and the Italian prime minister were at their hotel waiting for the siren to stop sounding.
Criticism of Macron for visiting Ukraine
The expected visit of the centrist president Emmanuel Macron to Ukraine outraged the opposition in France on Thursday, which considers it an instrumentalization when the ruling party plays its absolute majority in the legislative ballot on Sunday.
“Emmanuel Macron never does anything or says anything without second electoral intentions. (…) He uses that image of a war chief to try to influence the legislative elections,” the far-right leader Marine Le Pen assured on France Inter radio.
The opposition does not question his efforts to try to mediate between Moscow and
But kyiv criticizes the timing of his three-day tour of Romania, Moldova and Ukraine, which began on Tuesday with an unexpected speech from Paris-Orly airport.
At the foot of the runway, in front of an official plane with its engines running, Macron spoke of the seriousness of the situation in Ukraine and asked, in turn, the voters to give him a “solid” majority of deputies, “in the interest top of the nation.” “For three days, the Macronist political plane will have no pilot. After numbing the campaign by rejecting any debate, he saw the second round as an administrative formality… What contempt!” Leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon told Le Parisien.
France has been experiencing an electoral marathon since the beginning of the year to set its course for the next five years.
On April 24, the French re-elected Macron, against Le Pen, and now they must decide whether to give him a majority to apply his liberal program. But it’s not easy. According to observers, the voters reelected him to prevent the arrival of the extreme right to power and not because of his ideas. In addition, just after those elections, a majority already wanted him to lose his absolute majority in the Assembly.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
With information from AFP
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