EU leaders visit Kyiv in high-profile show of support

Kyiv: Four European leaders visited Ukraine on Thursday, denouncing the brutality of the Russian invasion in a high-profile show of support amid Kyiv’s fears that Western resolve to help the embattled country could wane as the war grinds on.

The visit, which included a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, carries heavy symbolic weight since the leaders of France, Germany and Italy have faced criticism for continuing to engage with Russian President Vladimir Putin — and failing to provide Ukraine with the scale of weaponry that it has said is necessary to fend off the Russians.

Romania’s president also made the journey. After arriving in Kyiv to the sound of air raid sirens, the leaders headed to Irpin, a suburb of the capital that was the scene of intense fighting early in the war and where many civilians were killed. They decried the destruction there. While shocking images of such devastation have rallied Western support, officials in Ukraine have expressed fears that “war fatigue” could eventually erode that — particularly as rising prices and upcoming elections in the United States are increasingly dominating people’s concerns.

The U.S. and its European allies have given billions of dollars in weaponry to Ukraine, and Germany and the U.S. recently announced new arms shipments. Such arms have been key to the country’s surprising success in preventing the Russians from taking the capital, but officials in Kyiv have said much more will be needed if they are to drive Moscow’s forces out.

Ahead of the meeting with Zelenskyy, the leader German Chancellor Olaf Scholz observed that officials must keep the horrible scenes destruction in mind in all their decisions. “Innocent civilians have been hit, houses have been destroyed; a whole town has been destroyed in which there was no military infrastructure at all,” Scholz 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.”

Italian Premier Mario Draghi said during the tour of Irpin that Ukraine’s backers will rebuild “everything” with European help. “They destroyed the nurseries, the playgrounds, and everything will be rebuilt,” Draghi said.

Macron, Scholz and Draghi, representing the three largest economies in the European Union, traveled to Kyiv together on a special overnight train provided by the Ukrainian authorities. They have been criticized for not visiting Kyiv sooner. A number of other European leaders have already made the long trip overland to show solidarity with a nation under attack, even in times when the fighting raged closer to the capital than it does now. —AP