By South China Morning Post | Created at 2025-03-09 18:11:12 | Updated at 2025-03-10 01:26:26
7 hours ago
France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine worth almost €200 million from the interest earned on frozen Russian assets, its defence minister said in an interview published on Sunday.
Sébastien Lecornu, a close ally of President Emmanuel Macron, in the interview with the Tribune Dimanche newspaper, described the suspension of US weapons deliveries to Ukraine as a “heavy blow” to Kyiv’s fight against the Russian invasion.
“This year we will mobilise, thanks to the interests of frozen Russian assets, a new package of €195 million (US$211 million)” for Ukraine, he said.
This will enable the delivery of 155-millimetre shells as well as AASM air to surface weapons that arm the French Mirage 2000 fighter jets that Paris has delivered to Ukraine for the war.
Lecornu did not make any comment on whether France would consider using the frozen Russian assets themselves to help Kyiv, a potentially far more significant move supported by its ally the UK but over which Paris as so far been wary.
But he warned that away from the battlefield, the “Russians are reinventing war, that is their great strength” by targeting “our democracy and our economy”.
