“I can give you fresh information: the situation is much better than during the last three months,” assured Volodymyr Zelensky, in an interview with the French television channel BFMTV and the daily Le Monde, contradicting numerous recent assessments of the Russian military campaign in Ukraine. The Russian advance “continued in the east of the country, today our command, our soldiers have stopped it”, he said, according to the translation of his remarks by a BFMTV interpreter.
“As long as Ukraine holds, the French army can remain on French territory”
“Your children are not going to die in Ukraine”, moreover, continued the Ukrainian president, assuring that the sending of foreign troops was not necessary for the moment. On February 26, Emmanuel Macron affirmed that the sending in Ukraine, in the future, troops should not “be excluded”, in the name of a “strategic ambiguity”, sparking intense controversy in Europe. Volodymyr Zelensky, however, pleaded for the sending of “technical personnel” for “co-production” of French Caesar cannons or German Leopard tanks and for “training”.
“The fact that (Emmanuel Macron) said that we cannot exclude anything, I think that (…) it is linked to Putin, because as long as Ukraine is there, as long as Ukraine holds, the “French army can remain on French territory”, reacted Volodymyr Zelensky. “But if Putin manages to attack another NATO country, well, it is the NATO countries that would have to decide how, in what quantity, their army should be sent or not,” he said. he adds.
Emmanuel Macron “only wants that (…) Ukraine does not find itself alone”, “he wanted to have a sort of union around Ukraine and I see no risk in that”, the leader further affirmed of the Ukrainian state. “More than 1,000 kilometers” of defensive lines are built or under construction on the front in Ukraine, he said.
“You should know that when we talk about fortifications it is a constant process, we are not talking about kilometers or not hundreds of kilometers, but more than 1000 kilometers of construction. It is therefore about “a very complex task”, he assured, mentioning “three lines of defense” already “built” against Russian forces, in the east, south and north of Ukraine. In his daily video speech Monday evening, Volodymyr Zelensky this time mentioned the figure of “2,000 km of works to strengthen existing fortifications and create new ones”.