French President Emmanuel Macron visited Ukraine Thursday along with the leaders of Germany and Italy in what was described as a “display of solidarity” with a country still soliciting firepower to fight Russia’s unprovoked invasion.
Mr. Macron, Germany’s Olaf Scholz, and Italy’s Mario Draghi arrived in Ukraine on an overnight train where they were joined by Romanian President Klaus Iohannis.
“It’s an important moment. It’s a message of unity we’re sending to the Ukrainians,” Mr. Macron said, according to Reuters.
It was their first trip to Kyiv since the invasion in February. The European leaders have been criticized in the past for what some supporters of Kyiv said was their overly cautious approach to backing Ukraine and appearing to be too deferential to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“From the beginning, Germany has been very cautious in its support for Ukraine – not the German people, I want to stress, but the German government,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview published Thursday in “Bild,” a German news magazine. “Germany, at first, didn’t support us with arms and openly said that we could not become a member of NATO and the (European Union).
Officials in Ukraine told reporters that they gave the visiting EU leaders proposals for sanctions against Moscow, including a gas embargo on Russia.