A new barrage of Russian missiles hit several cities, killing at least 11 people
Catherine Colonna’s visit to Odessa
French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna is visiting Odessa today. She arrived a little later than expected due to the bombing, and was greeted at the site by her Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba. While Germany and the United States announced on Tuesday the dispatch of heavy tanks to Kyiv, this trip, the fourth in Ukraine for the head of French diplomacy, aims to show France’s support, while a new Russian attack is feared. “The very obvious goal for Russia is to reach a position from the spring, activate the steam controller and use the effect of numbers to break the Ukrainian resistance.”as they say in the footnote to MI Colonna.
The French minister was due to go to a center for displaced Ukrainians from the Kherson region. Website supported by the Quai d’Orsay Crisis Center and a French-funded NGO. She will visit the electrical infrastructure destroyed by Russian bombing on January 14th.
The minister should also tour the ancient city of Odessa, which the day before was included in the UNESCO List of World Heritage in Danger. Finally, you will visit the headquarters of shipowners CMA CGM and Louis Dreyfus in the port of Odessa, two French groups involved in the export of Ukrainian grain, under the agreement negotiated this summer under the auspices of the United Nations.
One year after the outbreak of the Russian invasion, Paris considers Odessa, located on the shores of the Black Sea, still a strategic city: “If Russia’s goal is really to deny Ukraine access to the sea, then one day it will have to reach Odessa, knowing, moreover, that it is the gateway to stronger destabilization in Moldova, Romania and the European territory as a whole. »
The French minister was to leave by land for Chişinău, in order to meet the President of Moldova, Maia Sandu. She will fly to Romania on Friday to meet, among others, the head of state, Klaus Iohannis, and visit the French troops stationed in the country, along with their Romanian and Dutch counterparts.
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