Monitoring Desk
KYIV: French Minister for the Armed Forces Sebastien Lecornu has reaffirmed France’s constant support for Ukraine, insisting the French government’s backing is unflagging. At the same time, efforts are made to reach an eventual negotiated end to Russia’s invasion.
On Wednesday, France’s defence minister Lecornu arrived in Ukraine to discuss further military support for Ukraine.
Sebastien Lecornu travelled to Kyiv after a tour to Poland, where he announced a deal Tuesday to sell two French-made military satellites to Poland.
In Kyiv, the French minister laid a wreath at a heroes’ monument to pay homage to Ukrainians who laid their lives defending the country against the invasion of Russia. He was scheduled to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, and military officials.
While France has been less vocal regarding its military support for Ukraine than Britain and the United States, the country has sent weapons to Ukraine since Russia invaded on February 24.
France’s military support for Ukraine
France also hosted two aid summits for Ukraine in December. But several people in Ukraine remain critical of the French government’s response to the Russian war because of President Emmanuel Macron’s efforts to establish contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin and find a negotiated solution.
Immediately, it needed to be clarified what concrete agreements Lecornu’s talks in Ukraine might produce. He came to Kyiv a week after Zelenskyy visited Washington, Ukraine’s chief ally, and the fighting focused mostly on the country’s east. Still, neither Moscow nor Kyiv reported major gains in recent weeks.
While Ukraine and Russia have said they were willing to participate in peace talks, their stated conditions remain far apart. On Wednesday, the Russian Presidency’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov reiterated that any peace plan must acknowledge four regions of Ukraine as Russian territory, a demand that Ukraine flatly rejects.
Russian forces have pressed their operations to capture all of eastern Ukraine by concentrating in recent weeks on Bakhmut, a city in Donetsk province. Ukrainian troops were pushing a counteroffensive toward Kreminna, a city neighboring Luhansk province. Ukraine hopes to reclaim the area and potentially dividing Russian forces in the east.
France has supplied Ukraine with a substantial amount of its arsenal of Caesar cannons, anti-tank missiles, rocket launchers, and Crotale air defence missile batteries. It is also training around 2,000 Ukrainian troops on its soil. President Macron pledged last week to provide a new supply of weapons in early 2023 to Ukraine.
In the southern region of Kherson, Russian strikes hit a maternity hospital soon after two women delivered babies there, although Ukrainian officials said no one was wounded. Regional Governor Yaroslav Yanyshevych said the shelling damaged apartment buildings, a kindergarten, and a bakery.
Zelenskyy’s office later reported that shelling a riverfront village in the area injured a 14-year-old among three civilians.
In its daily assessment, the British Defence Ministry said that Russia has likely reinforced its front line near Kreminna as its forces come under continued pressure from the Ukrainian counteroffensive. The ministry said Russia would likely prioritize holding the line in the logistically important area.
The foreign minister of Ukraine told The Associated Press this week that his government would like a peace conference by the end of February. Ukraine said it wouldn’t negotiate with Russia before fully withdrawing its troops. At the same time, Moscow insists its military gains and the 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula cannot be ignored.
