For her third visit to Ukraine, the Minister of Foreign Affairs is due to meet Volodymyr Zelensky and then go to Gostomel airport.
French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna traveled to kyiv on Tuesday, September 27 for a support visit to Ukraine, which is facing an invasion from Russia, AFP journalists noted.
“Hello Ukraine, France is by your side“, she said on Twitter, accompanying her message with a photograph of her in a square in Kyiv covered with mist in the company of the French ambassador Etienne de Poncins.
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During this visit, her third to Ukraine since the start of the war, Catherine Colonna is due to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kouleba and Prosecutor General Andriï Kostine. She must also visit Gostomel airport, in the kyiv region, which was the subject of fierce fighting at the start of the war. Russian forces had finally withdrawn from the region at the end of March. “The Minister wishes to demonstrate France’s solidarity with the Ukrainian people and its full determination to strengthen its support for Ukraine and its sovereignty and territorial integrity.“, said his ministry in a press release.
According to the ministry, this visit also aims to highlight “the strengthening of the support provided by France, both in terms of the supply of defense equipment and the fight against impunity and in financial and humanitarian terms“. The ministry refers to the sending of a humanitarian boat to Ukraine with “more than 1000 tons of aid on boardand efforts to create a “protective areaaround the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, occupied by Russian forces and the target of multiple bombardments.
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The visit comes as Russia ends Friday the organization of annexation referendums in four regions of Ukraine under its full or partial control. These polls have been denounced by kyiv and its allies as “simulacra“. French President Emmanuel Macron called them last week “parody” and of “provocationon the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
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