Zelenskyy heading to Paris for talks with President Macron, Chancellor Scholz
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to visit Paris on Wednesday evening, and hold talks with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
German government officials said that Scholz was flying to Paris for the trilateral meeting in the French capital.
German broadcaster ntv was the first to report Scholz’s trip.
Both Macron and Scholz previously travelled to Kyiv in June 2022 — their first visit to the Ukrainian capital since the start of the Russian invasion four months earlier.
London and Brussels also on the agenda
The Ukrainian president has been in the UK on Wednesday morning. He held talks with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at Downing Street, gave a rousing address to parliamentarians at Westminster, and met with King Charles III at Buckingham Palace.
On Thursday, Zelensky is also expected to visit Brussels as EU leaders gather for a summit.
A senior EU official told Euronews that Zelenskyy’s trip to the Belgian capital would likely start with an address to an extraordinary plenary session of the European Parliament.
He could then join EU leaders convening for a special summit to discuss migration, the bloc’s response to the US Inflation reduction Act and support for Ukraine, including through a tenth round of sanctions against Russia.
Zelenskyy has joined these summits virtually multiple times since the war started to update leaders on the situation on the ground, but hasn’t so far attended in person.
It would come a week after EU Commissioners headed to Kyiv for meetings with the Ukrainian government followed on Friday by an EU-Ukraine summit attended by Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel.
They said then that “there is an open invitation to President Zelenskyy to visit Brussels” to which the Ukrainian leader replied: “I really want to travel but there’s a very significant risk because of Russia’s attempt to have a revenge.”
A trip to London and Brussels would be only Zelenskyy’s second known trip outside the country since the Russian invasion began on 24 February last year.
He visited Washington in late December to deliver a speech at Congress and hold a meeting with US President Joe Biden.