Criticized for their attitude towards the regime of Vladimir Putin, French Emmanuel Macron, German Olaf Scholz and Italian Mario Draghi, representatives of the three most populous and most industrialized countries in the European Union, made a joint trip to Kiev to show their full support. to the cause of the country partly occupied by Russia. While the three leaders, who were joined by Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, visited the destroyed Irpin and met with President Volodymyr Zelensky, “in a message of European unity”, Moscow threatened to cut off the gas supply again.
The German chancellor has been under fire for his hesitant and slow response to Ukrainian requests; the French president has caused outrage over and over again for not wanting to “humiliate Putin”; and the Italian prime minister presented a peace proposal that was seen in Kiev as a form of pressure to make territorial concessions. Furthermore, Scholz, Macron and Draghi did not show the initiative or courage displayed by the rulers of Poland, Slovenia and Rep. Czech three months ago, when they traveled by train to the Ukrainian capital and there was fighting in its surroundings.
At the end of April, when the high-level visits began to happen, Zelensky asked not to bring him “gifts or cakes” but “specific things”. The message was heard: the meeting of the four with the Ukrainian president did not stop at the symbolic level. All declared to be in agreement with Ukraine’s status as an “immediate” candidate for the EU, after several reports that pointed to divisions in the European camp over the enlargement strategy. “The four of us support Ukraine’s immediate candidate status” for membership in the European club. “Ukraine belongs to the European family”, summarized Scholz.
Read more in Diário de Notícias
