France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine worth more than $ 211 million in interests earned on frozen Russian assets, said its Minister of Defense in an interview published on Sunday.
Sébastien Lecornu, a close ally of President Emmanuel Macron, in the interview with the Tribune Sunday The newspaper described the suspension of American arms deliveries to Ukraine as a “hard blow” to kyiv's fight against the Russian invasion.
“This year, we will mobilize, thanks to the interests of frozen Russian assets, a new package of 195 million euros ($ 211,250,250)” for Ukraine, he said.
This will allow the delivery of shells of 155 millimeters as well as from AASM to surface weapons that arm the French mirage hunting planes that Paris delivered to Ukraine for war.
Lecornu did not comment on the question of whether France plans to use the frozen Russian assets themselves to help kyiv, a potentially much more important decision supported by its ally the United Kingdom, but on which Paris was so far suspicious.
But he warned that far from the battlefield, the “Russians reinvent war, it is their great strength” by targeting “our democracy and our economy”.
The presidential elections for the next 2027 France “could be the subject of massive manipulations as was the case in Romania” where the first round was surmounted by a far-right stranger, only for the results to be canceled by the Constitutional Court, he said.
He sought to play any break in transatlantic relations after Donald Trump won the American presidency and changed Washington's policy on Ukraine, saying: “For my part, I still consider them as allies, despite their great unpredictability.”
Turning to the “hard blow” of the American suspension of arms deliveries to Ukraine, he said: “They (Ukraine) can take some time, but this suspension must not last.”
Lecornu said that French information had no indication that Russia was planning to attack a member of NATO in the next five years, but said that there was a “temptation to destabilize Moldova” through his transistria escaped region.
Macron and others urging EU states to accelerate defense expenses as American Wavers, Lecornu stressed ammunition and electronic war as the most urgent problems for the French army in the coming years.
“Second priority, is the image of drone and the robot of the armies,” he added, also noting the roles of artificial intelligence and space.
