German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, and Romanian President Klaus Iohannis arrived by train in Ukraine’s capital Kiev on Thursday morning. This is the first visit for each of them since the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine in late February.
According to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Scholz, Macron and Draghi had to cross the Poland-Ukraine border on foot, had slept “in bunks” and held a late-night “summit” in their train carriage during their 11-hour-long trip to Kiev from the Polish airport of Rzeszow Jasionka.
The Romanian president only announced his trip to Kiev on Thursday morning when he arrived in the Ukrainian capital. Iohannis posted photos of himself exiting the train on Twitter. The four leaders are expected to hold talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and to visit Kiev’s suburb of Irpin.
“We’re here, focused, and we’re about to meet President Zelensky now to visit a war site where massacres have been committed, and then to lead the conversations that are scheduled with President Zelensky,” Macron told reporters at the Kiev train station. The visit is a “a message of European unity toward Ukrainians,” he explained, adding that “the weeks to come are going to be very difficult” for Kiev.
French diplomatic sources have told Politico that the leaders expect Zelensky to “define what would be a military victory for him.” At the same time, a French diplomatic source has also said that a “dialogue” between Moscow and Kiev would be “needed to find out how we build a sustainable peace” once the “war” is over. Such issues as security guarantees for Ukraine and Kiev’s relations to NATO are to be discussed in particular, the source has added.