The European Union is expected to supply more military equipment to Ukraine, including long-range armaments from France, said French President Emmanuel Macron.
Authorities from across the EU have continued to "advance the demands" that they received from Ukraine. This includes the request for French-made CAESAR self-propelled howitzers, Macron revealed on Thursday during a news conference in Prague.
EU Military Aid to Ukraine
Macron's announcement followed the First European Political Community Summit and had the French president note that all 44 nations at the summit "clearly expressed their condemnation for this Russian aggression" in Ukraine.
The lawmaker said that they would continue to support Ukraine from a financial point of view, a humanitarian point of view, and a military point of view. The situation comes as two Russian nationals have sought asylum in the United States after arriving in the country by boat in Alaska.
The two individuals landed on St. Lawrence on Tuesday after crossing the Bering Strait and were reportedly under federal custody in Anchorage, said Gov. Mike Dunleavy on Wednesday during a news briefing, as per CNN.
A spokesperson for Sen. Lisa Murkowski noted that the pair fled Russia in an attempt to avoid conscription into Moscow's military forces against Ukraine. Sen. Dan Sullivan said in a joint statement with Murkowski that the incident made two things very clear.
First, the Russian people did not want to fight President Vladimir Putin's war of aggression against Ukraine. Second, with Alaska's proximity to Russia, the state now has a crucial role to play in securing the country's national security.
According to France24, European Parliament speaker Roberta Metsola also urged the European Union to deliver tanks to Ukraine to speed up the process of Kyiv joining the bloc. The official said that she would be relaying the message to EU leaders at the Prague summit.
Russia-Ukraine War
She noted that the Ukrainians were in dire need of weapons that they could use in their fight against Russia in order to regain their home country. Metsola's remarks came during an interview during the parliament's sitting in Strasbourg.
Ukraine has long been requesting deliveries of German-designed Leopard II tanks to support its defense against Moscow's troops. However, Berlin has not agreed to supply the equipment, preferring that any such package would be part of a wider accord among Western allies.
Altogether, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and non-EU members Norway, Switzerland, and Turkey possess roughly 2,000 of the specified tanks.
Metsola was the first head of an EU institution to travel to Kyiv, a trip that she made in April, and is now saying that countries willing to provide tanks to Kyiv would be reimbursed from an EU fund. This is the European Peace Facility which has released $2.5 billion for Ukraine's military purchases.
Furthermore, the EU has agreed on an eight package of sanctions against Russia over its war on Ukraine. The package was closely coordinated with the European Commission's international partners and responded to Moscow's continued escalation and illegal war, including by illegally annexing Ukrainian territory based on sham "referenda," mobilizing troops, and issuing open nuclear threats, the European Commission reported.
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