European leaders promise Ukraine weapons, EU path

The leaders of four European nations promised more weapons and a path to European Union membership after meeting with Ukrainian leaders in Kyiv Thursday.

President Emmanuel Macron of France promised six additional powerful truck-mounted artillery guns to Ukraine Thursday, part of an effort, he said, “[to do] everything so that Ukraine alone can decide its fate.”

Macron joined German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Italian Premier Mario Draghi and Romanian President Klaus Iohannis in Kyiv for discussions with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and a subsequent tour of the capital’s war-torn suburbs.

The announcement comes on the heels of a German pledge to provide three medium-range rocket systems to Ukraine and a massive $1 billion American package involving anti-ship missiles, rocket launchers and conventional artillery systems.

The leaders arrived in the Ukrainian capital to the sound of air raid sirens, warning of yet more incoming Russian missiles. Then they toured Irpin, a Kyiv suburb that saw intense fighting and many civilian casualties during Russia’s aborted attempt to topple Zelensky’s government early in the war.

Reacting to the destruction, Sholz remarked on the Russian decision to target a town with little military value.

“Innocent civilians have been hit, houses have been destroyed; a whole town has been destroyed in which there was no military infrastructure at all,” the German leader said. “And that says a great deal about the brutality of the Russian war of aggression, which is simply out for destruction and conquest.

“We must bear that in mind in everything that we decide,” he added.

Draghi, the Italian premier, said greater Europe would aid Ukrainian efforts to rebuild.

“They destroyed the nurseries, the playgrounds, and everything will be rebuilt,” he said.

Italy, Germany and France are the three largest economic powers in the European Union, and their leaders have been criticized for not visiting the Ukrainian capitol sooner.

The three said they planned to back Ukraine’s pending bid to join the economic bloc. Ukraine’s bid for EU membership has long been considered a threat by Russia.

In 2013, then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych backed out of an expected economic deal with the European Union, opting instead to strike a deal with Russia, sparking the Euromaidan protests that led to Yanukovych’s ouster and Russia’s first incursion into Ukrainian territory in 2014.

After Thursday’s tour of Irpin, Iohannis of Romania called for justice.

“All Russian perpetrators to be held responsible by the international criminal justice [system],” he said on Twitter.

The leader, whose country borders Ukraine and has taken in a significant number of refugees since the war begain, took an emotional tone.

There were “no words to describe the unimaginable human tragedy and horrible destruction,” he said.

With Post wires