Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy will meet his US and French counterparts Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron this week as he tries to strengthen international support for his country’s military and diplomatic efforts to win the war with Russia.
The talks will take place as many leaders gather in Normandy to mark 80 years since the D-Day landings, and amid heavy fighting and air strikes in Ukraine and final preparations for a Kyiv-led peace summit in Switzerland to which Moscow is not invited.
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Mr Biden would meet Mr Zelenskiy this week in France and again in Italy during a meeting of G7 leaders on June 13th-15th. Washington will be represented at the June15th-16th peace summit by US vice-president Kamala Harris and Mr Sullivan.
Mr Macron’s administration said he would meet Mr Zelenskiy on Friday in Paris to discuss the situation in Ukraine “as Russian strikes intensify on the front line and against energy infrastructure”.
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France has not ruled out sending military instructors to Ukraine, and Kyiv’s top general Oleksandr Syrskyi said last week he had given formal approval for French trainers to work with his troops. The Ukrainian defence ministry quickly issued a “clarification” to say the issue was still being discussed.
Moscow has claimed, without providing evidence, that French military trainers are already in Ukraine masquerading as “mercenaries”, and warned this week that any foreign soldiers in the country could be targeted by Russian forces.
It is not clear whether France is preparing to make an announcement on sending military trainers to Ukraine, or whether any such a mission would be backed by other western states.
“We’ve said several times on the record that we’re not planning to send US military advisers … to train Ukrainians in Ukraine,” Mr Sullivan said.
“I will point out that the United States has stood up substantial training infrastructure in Germany, it has trained thousands of Ukrainian soldiers on western-made equipment, and we stand ready to continue and in fact expand that training.”
After travelling to southeast Asia to rally support for the Swiss summit, Mr Zelenskiy arrived on Wednesday in Qatar, which he said played “an active part” in preparations for the talks and “is expected to become one of the Middle East’s voices” on issues to be discussed at the meeting: the return of Ukrainian children abducted during the war by Russia and how to ensure global food, energy and nuclear security.
Ukraine wants to forge an international consensus in Switzerland around a peace plan that would involve the withdrawal of Russian troops from its territory, and then present that plan to Moscow at a follow-up summit.
The Kremlin says its absence from this month’s talks will make them pointless, while China has declined to attend because it argues that both warring sides should be represented. Beijing is also promoting its own, very broad, peace proposals which do not include any explicit call for Russia’s invasion force to go home.
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