Aris Messinis / AFP
France will use Russian assets to finance the maintenance of Caesar cannons sent to Ukraine by Paris. (Illustration of one of these guns, in June 2022 in the Donbass)
International – The subject had made a lot of talk (and had divided) in recent months. France will finally use frozen Russian assets in order to help Ukraine, the French diplomacy chief announced this Friday, May 9. Jean-Noël Barrot said that Paris was going to mobilize the income from these assets to maintain Caesar cannons delivered to kyiv.
“The mobilization of income from frozen actions” will allow France to “Power, through his KNDS company, ensure the operational maintenance of Caesar cannons […] provided to Ukraine to resist against the blows of Russia ”announced Jean-Noël Barrot who participates in a meeting of the foreign ministers of the European Union (EU) in LVIV, in the west of Ukraine.
In June 2024, the Franco-German armament group KNDS, which notably manufactured the Caesar cannons, had formalized in Paris the creation of a subsidiary in Ukraine and then indicated the establishment of a Caesar maintenance center. France has delivered sixty copies of these cannons, capable of drawing six shells in less than a minute at 40 km with great precision.
The EU will pay a billion euros to kyiv from Russian assets
Paris will not be alone to rely on Russian assets to help kyiv. On the sidelines of the European meeting organized this Friday, the head of EU diplomacy announced the release of one billion euros in favor of the Ukrainian defense industry, so that it “May defend yourself better”. This aid will also be funded from the interests generated by frozen Russian assets.
This is not the first time that the EU has used this method. In March, she allowed him to finance the aid sent to Ukraine, which Moscow had described as « vol ». In total, the Westerners have frozen some 235 billion euros in Russian assets since the start of the war in 2022, the majority of which is in Europe.
-The question of Russian assets had aroused vivid debates in France, especially when the resolution of the support of Ukraine adopted by the National Assembly on March 12. MPs « exhort[aient] the European Union and its Member States to carry out the seizure of frozen Russian assets ”a measure to which the executive opposed.
Barrot favorable to new sanctions against Russia
The Minister of the Economy Éric Lombard judged her “Contrary to international agreements”. For his part, Emmanuel Macron recalled, during a visit to the White House at the end of February, that“We can take the income of frozen assets, but we cannot take the assets themselves”.
Rather offensive, Jean-Noël Barrot estimated this Friday that it was necessary “Pushing (Russian President) Vladimir Putin to consent” to a ceasefire. “We want peace and today the only obstacle to peace is in Moscow, he parades, his name is Vladimir Putin”he launched on the sidelines of the meeting of European ministers in Lviv. “Yesterday the President of the Republic spoke several times with President Trump to whom he expressed this strong conviction”he said.
“I myself had Lindsey Graham, the American senator, [républicain]which carries a package of massive sanctions against Russia with 70 Democratic and Republican senators ”continued the chief of French diplomacy, “I assured him that with Europeans, we would also take a new pack of sanctions in the coming days to put pressure on Russia”.
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