Turning to the war in Ukraine now,
President Emmanuel Macron says France will send fighter jets to Kiev and train
thousands of soldiers to help the country repel Russia's invasion.
We don't see another record because we will launch a new cooperation and
announce the transfer of Mirage 2005 French fighter jets, Double-A, Ukraine,
to protect its soil, its airspace. And as early as tomorrow, we will start
a pilot training program and transfer our planes.
Chances of you keeping. Okay.
Let's get more on this story then with Bloomberg's news director in Africa,
Ross Matheson. Ross, what has emerged that we had the
meeting between Biden, Macron, Zelensky, some progress, it seems, in terms of
European support from the French side, at least in terms of the military of
Ukraine. What are the details?
Well, that's right. So we saw the agreement.
France is going to send fighter jets. But the interesting thing from Emmanuel
Macron is he said they have to train the Ukrainian pilots first.
He said the earliest they're going to get there is probably the end of the
year. So that's telling because for a start,
that means that he thinks the war is still going to be going on potentially
at the end of the year. But also they're not going to arrive
immediately. And as we know, there's a crunch point
going on now for Ukraine, where they're running very short still on weapons,
including fighter jets and repelling these fresh Russian advances near the
border. And in fact, France is among those
countries that is now allowing Ukraine to use Western made weapons to make
targeted strikes inside Russia. So we had the announcement about that in
terms of fighter jets, but we still are waiting to see the bulk of this fresh
air arriving into Ukraine. And certainly the signs are that it's
going to take many months to get there. Yeah, and Macron asked as well whether
or not that would be seen, at least the training of soldiers in the western
parts of Ukraine as a sign of aggression.
And he says, no, that shouldn't be interpreted as that when it comes to the
next meetings, because it's further meetings between Biden Zelensky at the
G7. What can we expect from that?
Is anything material in terms of what moves the dial, as you say, for a
Ukraine military that is challenged right now, what would be there probably
is more the conversation around money. So this is actually also keeping the
lights on in Ukraine, the economy going, and that's around what to do with all
these Russian assets that have been seized since the start of the war,
taking hundreds of billions of dollars of Russian assets that are sitting in
central banks and elsewhere around the world.
And that's been a very difficult and tricky one to do.
You use those assets in the meantime, How do you put them to work and more
edging towards and possibly will come up again at the G7?
The leaders will talk about it is can you use the interest from those assets
to loan money to Ukraine now? So you send them money now they're
funded by the interest from these assets.
But at some point, of course, that means that those assets have to stay available
and not under sanctions. So it's a little bit tricky, but that's
probably what's going to be up for conversation at the G7 specifically.
Okay. So two components is the financial part
coming through in the G7 and then the military support coming through at least
from France as Europe continues to build out that response?
