PARIS: Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky said on Friday he hoped to see French-supplied warplanes in Ukrainian skies soon after President Emmanuel Macron said France planned to provide it Mirage 2000-5 fighter jets.
Zelensky has long expressed his frustration at how long Western allies are taking to make key decisions on military support for Ukraine in its war against Russian invasion forces.
“I’m sure that a day will come when Ukraine will see the same jets in our skies that we saw in Normandy skies yesterday,” Zelensky told French lawmakers, referring to Thursday’s commemorations for the 80th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy.
“Your combat aviation, brilliant fighter jets under Ukrainian pilots’ command will prove that Europe is stronger, stronger than evil which dared to threaten it,” Zelensky said.
Macron also made a link with D-Day, promising Europe would not weaken in its support for Ukraine. He did not specify how many Dassault-made Mirages France would provide but said Paris would send the planes and train pilots by the end of the year.
US President Joe Biden said after meeting Zelensky in Paris on Friday that Washington would not walk away and has offered a new $225 million in weapons.
FRENCH WARPLANES AND TRAINING
The Mirage 2000-5 is a multi-role, single-engine jet fighter. France aims to replace its existing Mirage fleet by 2030 with Rafale warplanes, but it hopes also to convince other countries that have Mirages to supply them to Ukraine.
Zelensky addressed France’s National Assembly on Friday, earning several standing ovations.
“Can Putin win the war? No, because we have no right to lose,” Zelensky told the lawmakers. “Can this war end on the lines that exist now? No, because there are no lines for evil, not 80 years ago, not now.”
In the run-up to Zelensky’s visit, diplomats had said Paris could agree to send military trainers to Ukraine given Kyiv’s urgent needs to quickly mobilize more men.
Macron said that in the immediate term, France would train, equip and finance an entire brigade of 4,500 Ukrainians, but he stopped short of making any announcement on sending advisers for now.
Such a decision would be done on the basis of a collective decision, he said.
“There should not be a taboo on this subject. At a moment when Ukraine has a challenge, we need give an answer,” he said.
He said Ukraine’s defense minister had through an official letter 48 hours ago told its allies it needed more help in training quickly and on its soil.
“There is a request,” Macron said.
Ukraine’s military leaders admit that the battlefield situation on the eastern front has deteriorated. Two years of war have sapped Ukraine’s ammunition and manpower and a failed counter-offensive last year sank morale.
Though the US Congress finally greenlit a long-delayed $60 billion US military package in April, analysts say that a severe worldwide shortage of artillery shells means Ukraine is likely to be outgunned by Russia for the remainder of the year as Kyiv’s allies ramp up production.
Zelensky welcomes French promises of Mirage 2000 warplanes to help fight Russia
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Zelensky welcomes French promises of Mirage 2000 warplanes to help fight Russia
- “I’m sure that a day will come when Ukraine will see the same jets in our skies that we saw in Normandy skies yesterday,” Zelensky told French lawmakers
- “Your combat aviation, brilliant fighter jets under Ukrainian pilots’ command will prove that Europe is stronger”
Power outages hit Ukraine and Moldova as Kyiv struggles against the winter cold
- Outages had been caused by a technical malfunction affecting power lines linking Ukraine and Moldova
- Blackouts were reported in Kyiv, as well as Zhytomyr and Kharkiv regions
KYIV: Emergency power cuts swept across several Ukrainian cities as well as neighboring Moldova on Saturday, officials said, amid a commitment from the Kremlin to US President Donald Trump to pause strikes on Kyiv as Ukraine battles one of its bleakest winters in years.
Ukraine’s Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal said that the outages had been caused by a technical malfunction affecting power lines linking Ukraine and Moldova.
The failure “caused a cascading outage in Ukraine’s power grid,” triggering automatic protection systems, he said.
Blackouts were reported in Kyiv, as well as Zhytomyr and Kharkiv regions, in the center and northeast of the country respectively. The outage cut water supplies to the Ukrainian capital, officials said, while the city’s subway system was temporarily suspended because of low voltage on the network.
Moldova also experienced major power outages, including in the capital Chisinau, officials said.
“Due to the loss of power lines on the territory of Ukraine, the automatic protection system was triggered, which disconnected the electricity supply,” Moldova’s Energy Minister Dorin Junghietu said in a post on Facebook. “I encourage the population to stay calm until electricity is restored.”
Weaponizing winter
The large-scale outage followed weeks of Russian strikes against Ukraine’s already struggling energy grid, which have triggered long stretches of severe power shortages.
Moscow has sought to deny Ukrainian civilians heat, light and running water over the course of the war, in a strategy that Ukrainian officials describe as “weaponizing winter.”
While Russia has used similar tactics throughout the course of its almost four-year invasion of Ukraine, temperatures throughout this winter have fallen further than usual, bringing widespread hardship to civilians.
Forecasters say Ukraine will experience a brutally cold period stretching into next week. Temperatures in some areas will drop to minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 Fahrenheit), Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said.
Trump said late Thursday that President Vladimir Putin had agreed to a temporary pause in targeting Kyiv and other Ukrainian towns amid the extreme weather.
“I personally asked President Putin not to fire on Kyiv and the cities and towns for a week during this ... extraordinary cold,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting at the White House. Putin has “agreed to that,” he said, without elaborating on when the request to the Russian leader was made.
The White House didn’t immediately respond to a query seeking clarity about the scope and timing of any limited pause.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed Friday that Trump “made a personal request” to Putin to stop targeting Kyiv until Sunday “in order to create favorable conditions for negotiations.”
Talks are expected to take place between US, Russian and Ukrainian officials on Feb. 1 in Abu Dhabi. The teams previously met in late January in the first known time that officials from the Trump administration simultaneously met with negotiators from both Ukraine and Russia. However, it’s unclear many obstacles to peace remain. Disagreement over what happens to occupied Ukrainian territory, and Moscow’s demand for possession of territory it hasn’t captured, are a key issue holding up a peace deal, Zelensky said Thursday.
Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev said on social media Saturday that he was in Miami, where talks between Russian and US negotiators have previously taken place.
Russia struck Ukrainian energy assets in several regions on Thursday but there were no strikes on those facilities overnight, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday.
In a post on social media, Zelensky also noted that Russia has turned its attention to targeting Ukrainian logistics networks, and that Russian drones and missiles hit residential areas of Ukraine overnight, as they have most nights during the war.
Trump has framed Putin’s acceptance of the pause in strikes as a concession. But Zelensky was skeptical as Russia’s invasion approaches its fourth anniversary on Feb. 24 with no sign that Moscow is willing to reach a peace settlement despite a US-led push to end the fighting.
“I do not believe that Russia wants to end the war. There is a great deal of evidence to the contrary,” Zelensky said Thursday.
