New Europe Center (NEC) team carried out another advocacy visit to France, which was the fifth since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

According to the”New Europe” Director Alyona Getmanchuk, the NEC team together with advisers to President Macron in the Elysee Palace, with profile representatives of the French Ministry of Defense and the General Staff, where at the meeting instead of several people there were 16 representatives, the Ministry of Finance tried to find out the answers to the questions of how quickly and effectively to create a coalition of resolvers. This is exactly how the day after Macron’s statements Alyona Getmanchuk called a coalition of countries that, at the request of France, should reject the policy of self-restraint and begin to drown with all their might for the victory of Ukraine, and not some hybrid forms of fragile peace.

“Not all questions have been answered yet. In particular, it is still not very clear how France’s ambitions will be supported by appropriate resources. Moreover, regarding the confiscation of Russian assets – one of the top priorities of our visit and perhaps the only big issue where we have not yet agreed with Paris – they remain extremely cautious”, said Alyona Getmanchuk. “Thanks to partners from ICUV – International Centre for Ukrainian Victory, we provided them with arguments why it is worth to confiscate at least those 5 billion euros of 2022-2023 profits that could already be spent on military aid to Ukraine,” Getmanchuk added.

There was talked a lot about the urgent needs, such as the need to strengthen Ukraine’s anti-missile capabilities. Very specifically, questions were raised about the possibility of using the French SAMP-T, which is based in Romania.

On April 6, our partners organized a serious rally “Make Russia pay” on the streets of Paris, where we also took an active part.

The sagnificant part of visit was about the III Ukraine-France Forum. On April 4 about 500 participants gathered on a platform for the opinion exchange between government officials, parliamentarians and independent experts who deal with military, political, security, economic and energy problems common to Ukraine, France and Europe in general. The forum was organized by the New Europe Center and the French Institute of International Relations (Ifri) with support the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The advocacy visit to France was carried out by the New Europe Center in partnership with ICUV (International Center for Ukrainian Victory) with the support of the “Renaissance” International Foundation.