Sébastien Lecornu will welcome Rustem Umerov to Paris on January 18. The two men are to open the Launch Conference of the “Artillery Coalition”, one of the thematic working groups of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group (UDCG), under the leadership of France and the United States.
The French Minister of the Armed Forces will receive his Ukrainian counterpart next week for a meeting focusing in particular on artillery, which kyiv is demanding to be strengthened to defend itself against Russia. Sébastien Lecornu will welcome Rustem Umerov to Paris on January 18, his office told AFP on Friday evening, after his trip to kyiv last September.
The two men are to open the Launch Conference of the “Artillery Coalition”, one of the thematic working groups of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group (UDCG), under the leadership of France and the United States. It “aims to unite the efforts of the participating nations to help – in the short and long term – Ukraine to have an artillery force adapted to the needs of the counter-offensive and its army of tomorrow,” he said. specified the ministry.
Stéphane Séjourné on his way to kyiv
The two men must also “visit industrial sites and meet French industrial groups”, to discuss the war economy and the counter-offensive. The meeting comes as Paris tries to show its unwavering support for kyiv, whose military counter-offensive has not produced the expected results. The front has been virtually frozen for many months, confirming the hypothesis of a still long conflict, almost two years after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Less than 24 hours after his appointment, the new head of French diplomacy Stéphane Séjourné was himself on his way to kyiv to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday. According to the Ministry of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu will then travel to Israel on January 22, after a previous visit in November and a trip at the end of December to Egypt and Lebanon. His political talks will focus in particular on the “release of French hostages and missing persons” and on “efforts to prevent regional escalation, particularly in Lebanon and the Red Sea.”