Zelenskyy Announces ‘Important Defence Packages’ for Ukraine at April's ‘Ramstein’

Ukraine reached agreements with its Western partners on new defence packages during the upcoming summit in France. They are to be officially announced at a meeting in the Ramstein format in April. 

This was announced by President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a briefing, Ukrinform reports.  

‘First of all, I would like to thank France and Emmanuel Macron personally for a very well-organised meeting with concrete results... We got very correct and clear results. I would also like to thank you for our bilateral meeting. And for strengthening our Ukraine-France and Ukraine-UK relations. In addition to the €2 billion package we discussed - a defence support package from the French side - we agreed with all the leaders on a number of other important defence packages that will be announced during the Ramstein meeting. This is another agreement - that Ramstein will be held in April. The UK and Germany will be responsible for organising it,’ Zelenskyy said.  

The President also thanked President of the European Council Antonio Costa and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen for supporting the €150 billion ReArm Europe programme. The programme envisages that each participating country will be able to invest part of the funds in Ukrainian production, which, in particular, may facilitate the production of drones.

As The Gaze reported, a meeting of state leaders took place in Paris on 26-27 March to discuss support for Ukraine in deterring Russian aggression and achieving a just and lasting peace. In particular, they discussed the prospect of deploying a guarantee force in Ukraine.

During the meeting, Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on partner countries to create ‘one clear plan’ for the deployment of their peacekeeping forces in Ukraine and noted that now is not the time to lift sanctions against Russia.