Visit kyiv, French, German and Italian leaders tried to erase the past tensions with the Ukrainian president. They assured it that they support his request for obtaining the status of candidate for the European Union.
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Once is not custom. Volodymyr Zelensky, who knows how to put European leaders in the face of their contradictions, did not hide his satisfaction with the “friends” he received in kyiv, Thursday, January 16. To believe it, the discussions of the day even made it possible to “turn the page” of the recent tensions aroused by the words of Emmanuel Macron on the need to “do not humiliate” Russia of Vladimir Putin, in the idea of Leave the door open to possible negotiations. It must be said that the head of state, the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, the president of the Italian council, Mario Draghi, and the Romanian president, Klaus Iohannis, who arrived by train in the morning, worked to multiply the wages of their Support for Ukraine, soon four months after the start of the Russian invasion. “Europe is by your side, it will remain so as it will take until victory, which will have the face of the return of peace to a free and independent Ukraine,” even launched Emmanuel Macron.
First step of this visit: barely descended from the train after a night of travel, the four leaders went to Irpine, about twenty kilometers from the center of the capital. Breeding walls, broken car carcasses, blackened buildings, this city is both a martyred site of the Russian occupation and one of the symbols of the Ukrainian resistance. On March 28, Putin soldiers had to abandon him after ferocious fighting, intended, on the Ukrainian side to prevent the fall of the capital, blocking the enemy at its doors. Since the end of March, the smell of pines, which grows between the buildings, has gradually replaced that of death, at least in the district surveyed by visitors of the day.
The Irpine bridge, under which residents had taken refuge, is collapsed, cut in half by the bombing. The state of the locality, 80 %destroyed, illustrates “the brutality of the war, while Irpine was not a military site,” said Olaf Scholz. Emmanuel Macron said he saw in this “heroic city”, “the stigma of barbarism”, “the first traces of what war crimes are”. Over 300 civilians died in Irpine. At the height of fighting, the city of 60,000 souls lost more than 95 % of its inhabitants. Barely half has come back since.
“everything will be rebuilt”
On a ravaged facade, an advertising panel praises a reduced real estate program to the ruin state. “Everything will be rebuilt,” said Mario Draghi. Volodymyr Zelensky was not present at that time, it was his Minister of Territorial Development, Oleksiï Chernychov, a great man in Kaki outfit, who guided the visit. “It is important for us to show the devastations of the war,” he confided when Mr. Macron and his traveling companions left the premises in a swarm of journalists and security agents.
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