The Élysée Palace reported that French President Emmanuel Macron promised his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky during a telephone conversation that French arms supplies to Kyiv would continue and increase in volume. He explained that the EU countries will consider Ukraine’s application to join the bloc at the upcoming June summit.

Earlier today, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron discussed preparations for the sixth round of sanctions against Russia. “I ended a long and meaningful telephone conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron,” Zelensky wrote on his Twitter account. “We talked about the course of hostilities, the process of saving the army from Azovstal, the vision of the future negotiation process. The issue of fuel supplies to Ukraine was raised,” he said.

“We also discussed defense support from France, the preparation of the sixth package of sanctions (the EU against Russia) and possible ways of exporting Ukrainian agricultural products. We discussed in detail our application for EU candidate status,” he added. He stressed that he had held a substantive discussion about Ukraine obtaining the status of a candidate for joining the European Union.