For the French president, this is his first tour of south-eastern Europe directly affected by the conflict triggered by Moscow at the end of February. Emmanuel Macron is expected Tuesday, June 14 at the end of the day in Romania to greet the 500 French soldiers who have been deployed on a NATO base since the invasion of Ukraine, before a support visit, Wednesday, to Moldova, country in the front line after Ukraine in the face of the attack by Russia.
>> War in Ukraine: “The alert was triggered one morning and in two days everything was ready”, report with French soldiers deployed in Romania
By going to the NATO military base near Constanta, on the shores of the Black Sea, Emmanuel Macron comes to support the 500 army men deployed on site from February 28, immediately after the attack. launched by Russia in Ukraine. It is about a hundred air force personnel, mainly in charge of anti-aircraft defense. The objective is to increase the strength of these NATO forces, in numbers – up to a thousand men – and in equipment – with Leclerc tanks – during the second half of 2022.
The reinforcement of this so-called “collective defense” battalion on the eastern flank of the Atlantic Alliance comes at a time when Ukrainian troops are suffering setbacks in the Donbass.
“Nothing is recorded” for a visit to Ukraine
But beyond this visit to the Constantza air base, Emmanuel Macron also comes on diplomatic ground to strengthen France’s ties with Romania and Moldova, two countries bordering Ukraine, and which each host dozens of thousands of refugees.
Finally, there is no official question, for the moment, of responding to the repeated invitations of Ukraine at war: thighly anticipated for weeks, the Elysée is not talking about a possible visit by the French president to kyiv, which specifies that “nothing is recorded” at this stage. For several weeks, Emmanuel Macron insists that he will only go there with the concrete.
