Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday he hoped for “the best possible outcome” of the NATO summit in Vilnius next week, during which kyiv hopes to see its aspirations to join the Alliance come true.
This summit will take place just over a month after the start of a counter-offensive by Ukrainian forces on the front, which has so far achieved only modest gains in the face of strong Russian defensive lines and due to from a lack of air force and artillery ammunition.
After receiving Polish President Andrzej Duda in Lutsk in western Ukraine, Mr. Zelensky said the two leaders had agreed to “work together to achieve the best possible result” for Kyiv at the summit scheduled for 11 and July 12 in Lithuania.
“We are stronger together,” said the Polish president, one of kyiv’s main supporters within NATO.
Ukraine must receive at the Vilnius summit “security guarantees” from the West for lack of accelerated accession to the Alliance as it had hoped. Both Mr. Zelensky and NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg have acknowledged that this prospect is unlikely before the end of the war with Russia.
US President Joe Biden, who flew to the UK on Sunday ahead of the summit, was adamant on the issue.
“I don’t think she’s ready to be part of NATO,” he swept up in an interview with the American channel CNN about Ukraine, also pointing out that there was no unanimity among the allies on the prospect of bringing Kiev “in the middle of a war”.
“We would be at war with Russia if that were the case,” he warned.
Repatriated Ukrainian commanders
Volodymyr Zelensky returned from Turkey on Saturday, repatriating several commanders of the Azov regiment, taken prisoner by Russia and then exchanged and who were to remain in Turkey until the end of the war, according to an agreement between Moscow and Kiev.
Celebrated as heroes in Ukraine but reviled in Russia, their return to Ukraine angered the Kremlin, whose spokesman Dmitry Peskov said was “a direct violation” of the agreement.
One of the officers of this regiment close to Ukrainian ultranationalist circles, Denys Prokopenko, quoted by the Interfax-Ukraine press agency, declared immediately that he was going to return to the front.
“That’s why we came back to Ukraine. This is our main goal,” said Mr. Prokopenko, who, along with his other comrades-in-arms, had been living in Turkey since September.
The heads of Russian and Turkish diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov and Hakan Fidan, raised the issue on Sunday during a phone call, according to Moscow.
Mr. Lavrov also warned his counterpart that arms deliveries to kyiv put the country on a “destructive trajectory”, unusually critical words between the two partners.
On Saturday, for the 500 days of the war, the Ukrainian president celebrated the “courage” of his people, in an undated video clip where he was seen on Serpents’ Island in the Black Sea, a territory symbol of resistance against in Moscow.
The war in Ukraine, which started on February 24, 2022, has killed 9,000 civilians, including 500 children, according to the UN, which estimates that the death toll could be much higher.
Cluster bombs
In the absence of accelerated NATO membership, Ukraine on Friday obtained from the United States the promise to deliver cluster munitions, a very controversial weapon but which Mr. Zelensky described as “an essential program help”.
These weapons, banned in many countries, are widely criticized because they kill indiscriminately by dispersing small explosive charges before or after the impact, accused of causing many collateral civilian victims.
Mr Biden said the decision to deliver the bombs had been “difficult” but was “the right thing to do”.
The United Kingdom called on Saturday to “discourage their use”, as did Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen who recalled on Sunday “the painful experience” of his country, hit by the United States in the early 1970s.
“This would be the greatest danger for Ukrainians for many years,” Hun Sen wrote on Twitter, as Cambodia faced tens of thousands of people maimed or killed by these bombs.
Russia denounced this decision on Saturday as an “admission of weakness” in the face of the “failure” of the Ukrainian counter-offensive. Moscow has estimated that Washington is thus making itself an “accomplice” of the civilian victims that these bombs will cause.