War in Ukraine: Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna visits Odessa

Foreign Minister Ekaterina Colonna arrived this Thursday morning in Odessa, whose region was hit by a new salvo of Russian missiles on the same day, to demonstrate Paris’s support for Ukraine.

“To Odessa! To celebrate France’s support for Ukraine’s sovereignty today as yesterday,” the minister tweeted as two key energy facilities in the region were damaged by strikes.

“Thank you for your brave visit,” his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba replied on the same channel, describing France’s support as “crucial” ahead of the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of his country.

The French minister stopped in Moldova on Wednesday evening and left for Odessa on Thursday. His arrival was delayed by another salvo of Russian missiles, which killed at least one person in Kyiv and caused power outages in several regions.

Kateryna Kolonna and Dmytro Kuleba, in particular, “will address the pressing and urgent needs of Ukrainians in military and civil matters,” a diplomatic source said.

“Decisions” on the tanks “Leclerc” is not accepted

The goal of the talks is to allow Ukrainians to be supplied with equipment “appropriate to their needs,” the same diplomatic source clarified, adding that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “did not express the need for (French) Leclerc tanks.” for “obvious” reasons, namely logistics, maintenance and inventory.

“For any army, having 10 different types of tanks in the armed forces creates a logistical equation that is almost unsolvable,” the source said, insisting that the Ukrainians “wanted to have Leopard 2 tanks from the very beginning.” When asked by the LCI about the supply of Leclerc tanks by France, Catherine Colonna said that at the moment no decisions have been “made” or “not excluded”.

At the same time, the press secretary of the Quai d’Orsay, Anne-Clair Legendre, during a press briefing, recalled that France is not at war: “We are not at war with Russia, and none of our partners is at war. (…) The supply of military equipment as part of self-defense exercises (…) does not constitute a joint war.”

This is the fourth visit of the Minister of Foreign Affairs to Ukraine since the beginning of the war on February 24, 2022. Her presence in Odessa is very symbolic the day after the inclusion of the historical center of this famous city by UNESCO. The Black Sea coast is included in the list of world heritage under threat due to the “threat of destruction” hanging over it.