Macron set for postponed Ukraine trip ‘in coming weeks’

French President Emmanuel Macron is to travel to Ukraine "in the coming weeks" according to his office.

Published: 11 March 2024 12:13 CET

Macron set for postponed Ukraine trip 'in coming weeks'

Emmanuel Macron hosted Volodymyr Zelensky in Paris in February. Photo by Thibault Camus / POOL / AFP

Macron had initially said he would visit Ukraine in February, before indicating that the visit would take place before mid-March.

The trip will be the second Macron has made to Ukraine since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022, following a visit he made alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and then Italian premier Mario Draghi to Kyiv in June that year.

The French president has in recent weeks infuriated Russia with his calls to ramp up support for Ukraine, with the Kremlin warning last week that he was increasing France’s involvement in the Ukraine conflict.

On Sunday evening Macron spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and the two “agreed to remain in close contact,” the Elysée said in a statement, adding that the French president’s visit to Ukraine “should take place in the coming weeks.”

While Sunday’s statement provided no other details about the upcoming visit to Ukraine, Macron’s trip is believed – according to French media reports – to have been repeatedly postponed due to security considerations. Macron hosted Zelensky in Paris in mid-February when the two signed a bilateral security pact.

Last week a deadly Russian missile strike on the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa appeared to land near the motorcade of Zelensky and the visiting Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

“We took it as a message,” French newspaper La Tribune Dimanche quoted a source close to Macron as saying.

Macron had initially been scheduled to travel to the capital Kyiv and Odesa on February 13th and 14th, the newspaper said.

La Tribune Dimanche also said that Macron could again visit Ukraine in the company of leaders of other countries, this time possibly from the Baltic States, Romania, Britain and the Czech Republic.

In late February Macron caused an uproar by refusing to rule out the dispatch of Western ground troops to Ukraine. Last week French Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu said that while the deployment of Western combat troops to fight in Ukraine was not on the table, a greater military presence could include mine clearance and the training of Ukrainian soldiers on Ukrainian soil.

Macron’s office said both the French president and Zelensky “reiterated their desire to make progress” on cyber defence, mine clearance, maintenance and co-production of armaments in Ukraine, and border security, among other priorities.

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“I don’t believe in the model… which would involve finding third countries on the African continent or elsewhere where we’d send people who arrive on our soil illegally, who don’t come from these countries,” Macron said.

“We’re creating a geopolitics of cynicism which betrays our values and will build new dependencies, and which will prove completely ineffective,” he added in a wide-ranging speech on the future of the European Union at Paris’ Sorbonne University.

British MPs on Tuesday passed a law providing for undocumented asylum seekers to be sent to Rwanda, where their asylum claims would be processed and where they would stay if the claims succeed.

The law is a flagship policy for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government, which badly lags the opposition Labour party in the polls with an election expected within months.

Britain pays Paris to support policing of France’s northern coast, aimed at preventing migrants from setting off for perilous crossings in small boats.

Five people, including one child, were killed in an attempted crossing Tuesday, bringing the toll on the route so far this year to 15 – already higher than the 12 deaths in 2023.

But Macron had warm words for London when he praised the two NATO allies’ bilateral military cooperation, which endured through the contentious years of Britain’s departure from the EU.

“The British are deep natural allies (for France) and the treaties that bind us together… lay a solid foundation,” he said.

“We have to follow them up and strengthen them, because Brexit has not affected this relationship,” Macron added.

The president also said France should seek similar “partnerships” with fellow EU members.