The French president arrived in the Ukrainian capital Thursday morning, in the company of the German and Italian Prime Ministers, Olaf Scholz and Mario Draghi. The three men should multiply the gestures of support for the Ukrainian people, to make people forget their late arrival in the country.
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Barely on board, Emmanuel Macron, the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and the president of the Italian council, Mario Draghi, held a small meeting with three, in order to immortalize the moment in a very “Orient-Express” atmosphere . Ten hours later, the train from the Polish border with the three men on board arrived Thursday, June 16, at the start of the morning in kyiv, after a long night crossing in the west of the country. The leaders had to spend the day in the Ukrainian capital, in order to finally display their solidarity on the spot towards a country which has been resisting for almost four months to the invasion triggered by Russia of Vladimir Putin.
The visit, the subject of a thousand rumors not confirmed since the weekend, first makes it possible to catch up, for some as for others, some missed opportunities. For weeks, Ukrainian officials have thus presented the head of state to come before the end of the French presidency of the Council of the European Union, on June 30. But he temporarized, officially for electoral reasons, also anxious to be “useful” through this displacement with high symbolic value.
As for Chancellor Scholz, he was slow to make the trip due to recurring tensions between Berlin and kyiv. Result, since the start of the conflict, Mr. Macron and his traveling companions have been preceded in the Ukrainian capital by many of their continental counterparts, including the British Boris Johnson, the Polish Andrzej Duda and those responsible for the institutions of the European Union . It had become difficult for each of them to come alone, so late.
trio from the “old Europe”
On arrival, the Romanian president, Klaus Iohannis, who came by another road, joined his counterparts in kyiv, just to give a touch from central Europe to the trio from “old Europe”. Together, they had to go to one of the localities of the suburbs of kyiv, where the Russian army committed atrocities against civilians, before retiring, failing to have managed to take the capital in late March. President Volodymyr Zelensky was to be with them during this tribute to the victims of the conflict. One later in the day, Emmanuel Macron was to meet French officials sent to kyiv to investigate war crimes of which the Russian army is accused.
To make up for lost time, the quartet had above all to seek, in particular during an interview with Mr. Zelensky at the presidential palace, to multiply the words and gestures of support. For them, it is a question of overcoming the doubts expressed, in Ukraine as in the capitals Baltic and Polish, by their relative moderation since the triggering of the Russian invasion, on February 24. Both support kyiv in his war effort which does not prevent a certain number of frictions between allies.
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