President Volodymyr Zelensky urged the West on Friday to do more to achieve a fair peace as Ukraine battles the Russian invasion, telling US leader Joe Biden that Kyiv is counting on “shoulder-to-shoulder” support.
One day after Western leaders went to northern France to mark the 80-year anniversary of the D-Day landings in World War II, Zelensky addressed the French parliament while Biden was also to deliver a keynote speech in Normandy on democracy.
Zelensky told France’s National Assembly that he hoped a summit hosted by Switzerland later this month on bringing peace to Ukraine could hasten a fair end to the conflict.
Biden, who met Zelensky in Paris after the speech, pledged his support for Ukraine and announced another $225 million in aid to Kyiv.
The new package includes air defense interceptors, artillery ammunition and other “critical capabilities,” the White House said in a statement.
In a separate statement, the US Department of Defense said that the security package would provide Ukraine with weapons to “meet its most urgent battlefield needs” and include Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, ammunition for HIMARS systems, and 155 mm and 105 mm artillery rounds.
“The United States will stand with you,” Biden told Zelensky.
Biden hailed Ukraine’s “remarkable” resistance against the Russian invasion, saying, “You haven’t bowed down. You haven’t yielded at all… We’re not going to walk away from you.”
Zelensky thanked him for the “tremendous support” and compared it to the United States coming to Europe’s aid during World War II.
“We count on your continuing support to stand with us shoulder-to-shoulder,” the Ukrainian leader said.
Kyiv has been pushing Europe to increase military support, with Russia gaining the upper hand on the battlefield in recent months, in particular in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region.
The Ukrainian president warned the French parliament that 80 years after the D-Day landings of World War II, Europe was “unfortunately no longer a continent of peace” because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Zelensky dismissed that there could be peace in Ukraine based on current front lines, seeing as Russia is sometimes deep inside Ukrainian territory.
Speaking on French television, President Emmanuel Macron said late on Thursday that Paris would transfer Mirage 2000 fighter jets to Ukraine and train Ukrainian pilots as part of a new military cooperation.
Macron said that he would offer to Zelensky that the pilots be trained starting this summer.
He said that Western allies would consider a request from Ukraine to send military instructors to train its forces on its soil to meet the growing challenge of building up troop numbers.
During Zelensky’s visit, Franco-German battle tank maker KNDS announced the creation of a Ukrainian subsidiary.
Stuart Williams and Aurelia End with AFP
