A videoconference of the G7 leaders, including the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Canada, along with Zelensky, was set to take place at 5:00 p.m. local time (3:00 p.m. GMT).
On Saturday, the European Commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, visited Kyiv on the second anniversary of Russia’s large-scale attack on Ukraine.
She said that the European Union (EU) was strongly committed to supporting Ukraine in all aspects until it regained its freedom. “We stand by Ukraine more than ever. We back it financially, economically, militarily, and morally. Until it is finally free,” she wrote on her official X account. “I am here to honor the amazing courage of the Ukrainian people who face the Russian aggression,” she told reporters.
Von der Leyen also mentioned that the EU had announced a significant financial aid package for Ukraine on February 1, amounting to 50 billion euros ($54 billion) for four years, but stressed that it was equally important to show moral solidarity with the country. She said that her visit would be an opportunity to discuss all the ways that the EU was helping Ukraine.
Von der Leyen was expected to meet with Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky, who had been told by her three days earlier that the EU would not make a decision on opening accession talks with Ukraine until after the European elections in June, even though the EU had planned to do so in March. She was accompanied by the Belgian Prime Minister, Alexander De Croo, who holds the rotating presidency of the EU Council this semester, as well as the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, and the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau.
They all traveled to Kiev on the same night train. “Allies arrive in Kiev,” Oleksander Shevchenko posted on Facebook, with a picture of Trudeau stepping off the train in Kiev. De Croo had said in Warsaw the day before that the situation on the ground was bad, but that it did not mean giving up.
He said that it was essential that the EU countries kept their support high in terms of weapons and artillery.
Meloni was scheduled to attend a ceremony with Zelensky at the Antonov airport in Hostomel, a symbolic site of the Ukrainian resistance right after the Russian assault on the capital, and then sign a security agreement at the Mariinsky Palace, the seat of the Ukrainian presidency.
A videoconference of the G7 leaders, including the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Canada, along with Zelensky, was set to take place at 5:00 p.m. local time (3:00 p.m. GMT) from the Saint Sophia Cathedral in central Kiev. A joint statement is expected to be issued after the meeting.
The EU had not delivered on its promise to provide one million howitzers to Ukraine by March. The EU had given 355,000 rounds of 155mm ammunition to Ukraine since February 2023, and hoped to deliver 524,000 by March. By the end of the year, the EU estimated that it would have given a total of 1,115,000 howitzers.
The day before, Zelensky had signed a long-term security deal with Denmark in the Ukrainian city of Lviv, with the Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen.
