(Paris) “Europe is no longer a continent of peace,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky lamented on Friday before French deputies, urging his allies to “do more” to help Kyiv in the face of Russian aggression, day after the ceremonies marking the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings, where American President Joe Biden will deliver a speech on democracy in the afternoon.
Faced with a National Assembly which had not had its fill, the Ukrainian president painted a black picture of the situation on the Old Continent after having participated the day before in the D-Day commemorations alongside Emmanuel Macron, Joe Biden, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
“We live in a time when Europe is no longer a continent of peace,” declared the Ukrainian president, whose country has been targeted since February 2022 by a deadly Russian offensive.
“Again in Europe, cities are completely destroyed and villages are burned. Filtration camps, deportations and hatred appear again in Europe,” he said, calling Russian President Vladimir Putin “a common enemy” of his country and Europe.
Thanking France on several occasions for its military and diplomatic support, while Emmanuel Macron announced Thursday evening the transfer of Mirage 2000-5 fighter planes to Kyiv, the Ukrainian head of state affirmed that victory was possible , despite Russian advances on the front. “Can we win this battle? Certainly, yes,” assured the Ukrainian president, who spoke for the first time to the French representation.
“This battle is at a crossroads,” he said. “For just peace, more is needed,” he added. “And it’s not a criticism, it’s just how to overcome evil, to do more today than yesterday.”
Volodymyr Zelensky also judged that the international peace summit scheduled for June 15 and 16 in Switzerland could bring Ukraine “to the just end of this war.” This international conference will bring together more than a hundred countries and organizations, but not Russia.
Mr. Zelensky is due to speak with the French Minister of the Armed Forces before a late afternoon meeting with Emmanuel Macron.
During a television interview the day before, the French president mentioned the possible sending of European instructors to Ukrainian soil, at the request of Kyiv, without however providing a firm response.
“We are working with all of our partners […] We will decide in coalition,” he assured. Berlin has already publicly ruled out this possibility.
Asked whether sending Western instructors to Ukraine constituted an escalation against Moscow, “the answer is no,” said Mr. Macron. “Go and train someone in the West zone which is a free zone in Ukraine, it’s not aggressive,” he insisted.
According to Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, these statements show on the contrary that France is “ready to participate directly in the conflict.”
In parallel with this Ukrainian sequence, American President Joe Biden will deliver a speech at the site of one of the fiercest battles of the D-Day landings, Pointe du Hoc in Normandy, which the American Rangers seized on June 6, 1944, taking over the Germans a decisive ascendancy.
Five months before the American election, it is both the president and the Democratic candidate that we will hear, at 4 p.m. local time (11 a.m. Eastern time), while the polls are struggling to decide between Joe Biden and his Republican rival Donald Trump.
On Thursday, the tenant of the White House promised to never abandon his Western allies or Ukraine in his battle against Russia, while former President Trump publicly questioned the importance of organizations like NATO.
“We live at a time when democracy has never been at greater risk around the world since the end of World War II,” he said. Under his mandate, Washington will not stop supporting Kyiv “because if we do, Ukraine will be subjugated and it will not stop there,” he warned.
Friday in Bayeux where the first American soldiers landed in France at dawn on June 6, 1944, Emmanuel Macron estimated that D-Day had marked the “rebirth” of “universal and proud” France.