Ukraine’s Zelenskiy and Belgium PM sign security pact
Ukraine and Belgium on Tuesday struck a bilateral security agreement including the delivery of 30 F-16 fighter jets, signed during a Brussels meeting between Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Belgian prime minister Alexander De Croo.
“The document includes at least 977 million euros in Belgian military aid to Ukraine this year, as well as Belgium’s commitment to providing support over the course of the agreement’s ten-year term,” Zelenskiy said in a social media post.
Today Belgium signs an agreement on security cooperation and long-term support with Ukraine.
President @ZelenskyyUa you need the right tools to protect your citizens.
We are very determined when it comes to our support.
So we need to more, better and faster. pic.twitter.com/AVmAuTZfRp
— Alexander De Croo 🇧🇪🇪🇺 (@alexanderdecroo) May 28, 2024
Key events
French mercenaries have been in Ukraine for a long time, and the appearance of the regular military there is another step towards global conflict, Russian president Vladimir Putin said Tuesday.
France has repeatedly denied Russian allegations that there are French mercenaries in Ukraine. Paris says it has not ruled out sending military trainers to Ukraine in future but has made no decision to do so.
Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, has reported there has been a series of explosions in Kharkiv.
Speaking in Uzbekistan, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin has said that Ukraine should hold a presidential election now that Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s official term in office expired, and that the offensive in Kharkiv was provoked by the use of western weapons
Reuters reports Putin said the only legitimate authority in Ukraine now was parliament, and that its head should be given power.
He said the west ignored warnings about Ukraine striking inside Russian territory, and that this provoked the opening of a new front towards Kharkiv to create what Russia has called a buffer zone.
Tass reports the Russian president also warned of the danger of a global conflict due to western provocations. He called on Nato countries to think about “what they are playing with”. He described US attempts to intimidate other nations as “imperial” behaviour.
Putin said that Russia has long known that foreign mercenaries are operating in Ukraine, and said their communication intercepts often hear voices in languages other than Ukrainian, including French and Polish. He said the Russian Federation would continue to do as it sees fit, regardless of the presence of western military operatives in Ukraine, and that they would also be targets. Strikes on Russian territory by weapons supplied by the west to Ukraine are only possible with the help of specialists from western countries, Putin said.
He said that Russia has never refused to negotiate with Ukraine, and would resume talks on the basis of those held in Istanbul. Turkey attempted to broker peace very early on after Russia’s February 2022 invasion. In October 2022 president Zelenskiy signed a decree ruling out direct talks with Putin, but not completely closing the door on negotiations.
The two countries have diametrically opposed negotiating positions, with Ukraine insisting it regain all territory, including Crimea which was unilaterally annexed by Russia on 2014, and Russia insisting that Ukraine and the west have to recognise what it describes as “new realities” on the ground.
Putin said it was Ukraine who had rejected talks, and as a consequence they will face more losses if they attempt to change the situation in the battlefield.
Ukraine will receive its first supplies of F-16 fighter jets “very soon”, but around half of its desperately needed foreign military aid is arriving late, Kyiv’s defence minister has said.
Rustem Umerov, 42, told Reuters in an interview in Kyiv late on Monday that Russia was deploying more manpower and equipment to the front, more than 27 months after its full-scale invasion.
Kyiv’s forces have managed to stabilise the new front in the northeastern Kharkiv region where Russia attacked earlier this month. But Umerov said Moscow was preparing for a new push.
“Their objective is to open a new front in the north to start using all their manpower, firing power, against us, they are continuing with their objective to destroy the nation,” he said.
“We are withstanding, but of course we need more weapons, we need more firing power, we need long-range missiles, not to allow them to enter our state.”
He said Ukraine was grateful for the military aid and weapons supplied by its partners, but that only half of the promised deliveries arrived on time. Every delay benefited Ukraine’s much larger and better-equipped foe, with a front line stretching 1,200 km (750 miles).
Charlotte Higgins
Behind a gate presided over by a taciturn doorman, on the shore of the Black Sea in Odesa, is a tumbledown ship repair yard. It is one of many industrial sites in Ukraine that fell into disuse after the fall of the Soviet Union, but in 2016 a community of young artists started cleaning up debris, renovating the old workshops and making studios.
Now, in 2024, when the city is regularly pounded by Russian missiles, its city streets empty of the tourists who once flocked to its historic centre, there are just a handful of artists willing to withstand the continuous threat to life.
Vasya Dmytryk is one of those artists who has chosen to remain, his studio, a few metres from the shoreline, a cosy cave of books, tools and metal sculptures suspended from the ceiling. On his workbench was a copper-and-steel sculpture recalling the shape of a drone. His plan is to exchange it for a real drone: “We have a very direct mission as artists,” he said. “Raising money for the army.”
“I am really rooted in Odesa,” he added. “The things that I love and care about are here. I felt I couldn’t live without it.”
At the start of Russia’s fullscale invasion, he had actively considered whether, if the city came to be occupied by the Russians, he would “stay and try to protect Ukrainian culture, or leave and try to present Odesa’s culture in other cities in Ukraine”.
His friend, the artist and curator Valeriia Nasedkina, said: “If everyone leaves, what then? With our presence here, we are insisting that we still exist.”
Switzerland’s upper house of parliament has backed a motion to toughen measures to expel spies, taking particular aim at Russian intelligence agents as Bern prepares to host a major summit aimed at paving the way for peace in Ukraine.
Voting 32 in favour and nine against late on Monday, upper house legislators supported the motion entitled “systematically expel Russian spies and other foreign spies” that was backed by president Viola Amherd in an address to parliament.
“Foreign states should feel Switzerland is reacting to violations of its security and defending itself,” Amherd said, just over two weeks before her government prepares to host dozens of countries for the Ukraine peace talks, Reuters reported.
Amherd said the government wanted to consistently expel intelligence officers whose activities endanger Switzerland’s security or its role as a host state, while stressing that the motion would not lead to automatic decision-making.
Lunchtime summary
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Ukraine and Belgium on Tuesday struck a bilateral security agreement including the delivery of 30 F-16 fighter jets, signed during a Brussels meeting between Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Belgian prime minister Alexander De Croo. “The document includes at least 977 million euros in Belgian military aid to Ukraine this year, as well as Belgium’s commitment to providing support over the course of the agreement’s ten-year term,” Zelenskiy said in a social media post.
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Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said that if US president Joe Biden missed a peace summit organised by Kyiv in Switzerland next month, Vladimir Putin would “applaud” his absence. At a press conference in Brussels Zelenskiy said he wanted the US president to be “personally present” at the peace summit in Switzerland on 15-16 June.
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The Dutch have launched an initiative to expedite the assembly and delivery of patriot missiles to Ukraine, the defence minister Kajsa Ollongren has announced. Ukraine has been asking for air to defence rockets for months but member states up have been hesitant to release batteries from their own defence arsenals despite recent change of advice from Nato that their security is best served by having their machinery on the frontline.
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Poland should not rule out sending troops to Ukraine, its foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, has said as Kyiv struggles to repel Russian advances. But, in comments reported by Reuters, Sikorski did not specify what role such troops would play. While Ukraine’s Nato allies have vowed to supply the war-torn nation with money and weapons for as long as it takes to repel a Russian invasion, they have generally ruled out the possibility of sending soldiers to the country.
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Sweden is pausing plans to send Gripen fighter jets to Ukraine in order to allow for the introduction of F-16 fighter jets, the Swedish defence minister told news agency TT in Brussels. “We have been urged by the other countries in the coalition to wait with the Gripen system,” Pal Jonson told TT. “This has to do with the fact that the focus is now on introducing the F-16 system,” he added.
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Estonian defence minister Hanno Pevkur has described Ukraine’s need for ammunition as “very, very acute” as concerns have been raised that Russia is trying to frustrate arms deals with EU member states contributing to the frontline. He told reporters that Russia’s army had grown from an estimated 270,000 fighters to “close to half a million” while EU member states were still reluctant to increase their defence spending.
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The IAEA was able to reach an understanding with Russia on the safety of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Russia’s state-run news agency TASS reported on Tuesday, citing IAEA chief Rafael Grossi. The IAEA chief is meeting with a delegation from the Russian state corporation Rosatom in the western Russian city of Kaliningrad. Russian forces have occupied the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, since the first weeks after they entered Ukraine in 2022.
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Russia should stand its ground and continue what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine in response to the West’s military fervour, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday, as quoted by Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. At the same time, Peskov said that the West had no unanimity of opinion regarding the Ukrainian army’s strikes with Western weapons on Russian territory.
Sam Jones
In case you missed it yesterday, Spain said it will provide Ukraine with €1bn in military aid this year after the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, met in Madrid to sign an “enormously important”, decade-long defence and security deal.
Although the precise details of the agreement have not been made public, the Spanish government said its assistance would “allow Ukraine to prioritise its capacities, including its air defences”.
The bilateral deal was agreed two days after Russia’s onslaught in the north-eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv killed 18 people, and as EU leaders grow increasingly exasperated with Hungary’s efforts to block aid to Ukraine.
“[This deal] will allow Ukraine to boost its capabilities, including its essential air defence systems to protect its civilians, cities and infrastructure, which are still suffering indiscriminate attacks as seen this weekend in Kharkiv,” Sánchez told a press conference after the signing.
He said Spain had already pledged to supply Patriot missiles and said it would also send “another batch of Leopard tanks and above all ammunition”.
The Spanish government said the agreement would also include other areas, such as intelligence, training, de-mining, reconstruction and humanitarian assistance.
The IAEA was able to reach an understanding with Russia on the safety of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Russia’s state-run news agency TASS reported on Tuesday, citing IAEA chief Rafael Grossi.
The IAEA chief is meeting with a delegation from the Russian state corporation Rosatom in the western Russian city of Kaliningrad. Russian forces have occupied the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, since the first weeks after they entered Ukraine in 2022.
Russia should stand its ground and continue what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine in response to the West’s military fervour, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday, as quoted by Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.
At the same time, Peskov said that the West had no unanimity of opinion regarding the Ukrainian army’s strikes with Western weapons on Russian territory.
Sweden halts plan for Gripen jets to Ukraine, news agency reports
Sweden is pausing plans to send Gripen fighter jets to Ukraine in order to allow for the introduction of F-16 fighter jets, the Swedish defence minister told news agency TT in Brussels.
“We have been urged by the other countries in the coalition to wait with the Gripen system,” Pal Jonson told TT.
“This has to do with the fact that the focus is now on introducing the F-16 system,” he added.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said that if US president Joe Biden missed a peace summit organised by Kyiv in Switzerland next month, Vladimir Putin would “applaud” his absence.
At a press conference in Brussels Zelenskiy said he wanted the US president to be “personally present” at the peace summit in Switzerland on 15-16 June. He said:
(The) peace summit needs president Biden and so do the other leaders who look at the reaction of the United States. Putin will only applaud his absence, personally applaud it – and standing, at that.
The conference is being organised at Zelensky’s request to secure “a just and lasting peace” but Russia has not been invited, so it remains unclear what it can achieve.
Zelenskiy said he was also expecting a reply from China and Brazil, while stressing all participation was important: “Believe me every voice is important.”
Silence, he said, was worse than supporting the war: “You are either for peace or you are for war… if you are silent you are satisfied with what is going on.”
Jennifer Rankin
Belgium has pledged to send 30 F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine by 2028, with the first deliveries scheduled to arrive later this year, as the two countries signed a ten-year security and support pact.
At a press conference in Brussels Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the delivery of the jets in 2024 would “make our stance stronger” but voiced frustration with western allies’ restrictions to stop weapons being used against targets on Russian soil.
Referring to the attack on a hypermarket in Kharkiv close to the Russian border, he said “everything was blown up, children, people, civilians and you cannot answer them… But we can’t risk the support of our partners that is why we are not using our partners arms to attack Russian territory.”
Belgium’s prime minister Alexander De Croo said Belgium was working to deliver the first jets as soon as possible, without specifying how many would arrive this year.
De Croo said:
The fact that we can add our planes ourselves already this year is a very important signal to make absolutely clear that Ukraine will have a full blown capacity based on fighter jets in the months to come and in the years to come.
Under the terms of the agreement, Ukraine will not be allowed to use the Belgian jets to attack targets inside Russia.
Belgium promised the jets last October and Zelenskiy said it was the first time that the exact number of F-16 fighter jets to be delivered to Ukraine by 2028 had been specified.
Zelenskiy was in Brussels to sign a long-term support and security agreement between Ukraine and Belgium, which he said was worth €977m this year. Under the agreement Belgium will provide equipment for air forces and defence, naval security, mine clearance, military training and ammunition.
The agreement touches on strengthening sanctions against Russia, justice, compensation and economic recovery. The two sides will also deepen cooperation on intelligence, cyber security and countering disinformation.
Zelenskiy’s visit to Brussels follows a meeting in Spain on Monday, where prime minister Pedro Sánchez pledged €1bn in military aid for Ukraine in a decade-long defence deal that Madrid said will strengthen Ukrainian air defences.
Emily Foster is a globe-trotting journalist based in the UK. Her articles offer readers a global perspective on international events, exploring complex geopolitical issues and providing a nuanced view of the world’s most pressing challenges.
