(Brussels) Emmanuel Macron affirmed on the night of Thursday to Friday that fighter planes claimed by Ukraine could “in no case” be delivered “in the coming weeks”, ensuring that he favored “more useful” weapons and “faster”.
“I exclude absolutely nothing,” assured the French president to the press about deliveries of combat aircraft.
But “it does not correspond to the needs today”, he estimated, after a European summit in Brussels in the presence of his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky.
Throughout his European tour on Wednesday and Thursday, the Ukrainian president insisted that his country needed fighter jets to end the war led by Russia.
President Macron assured that his “very in-depth and very precise discussion” with Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday in Paris had highlighted that the priority must be “to do everything to help (Ukraine) to resist in the coming weeks”, and to “carry out useful operations in the spring-summer if we want to be able to then carry out diplomatic actions in parallel”.
“It is essential that the allies favor the materials that are the most useful” and “the fastest”, he added, considering that the Caesar guns and the MAMBA medium-range surface-to-air defense system provided by the France met these criteria.
It may be necessary to “intensify” the deliveries of “artillery elements allowing to launch ground offensives or to resist”, he insisted, promising to “work on it in the coming days”.