The recent permission to use Western weapons to strike targets outside Ukraine to defend Kharkiv and other cities has strengthened the country’s defense against Russian attacks, said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the G7 Summit in Italy, as per the Presidential Office.
However, Ukraine is still looking for additional “Patriots” and anticipates F-16 jets soon.
“I also ask you to do everything you can to accelerate our transition to the F-16, which means speeding up pilot training and increasing the number of training facilities for pilots,” the Ukrainian president told the G7 leaders.
Zelenskyy said at the Summit that the Ukrainian military “is grateful for all the military support packages” the G7 countries provided. He also urged the G7 leaders to deliver them Ukrainian soldiers” as soon as possible.
The Ukrainian leaders called on the Summit participants to draw up the reconstruction plan and confirm it with a joint G7-plus declaration – a recovery declaration.
“It will also be a declaration of peace because, through recovery, people will see that there will indeed be peace – that we believe in it and care about peace as much as we care about defense.
Our teams can work out the details just as they worked out the security declarations. It may be the perfect timing and symbolic solution – to prepare a recovery declaration just in time for the NATO summit in Washington and to adopt it during the Summit,” he said.
Additionally, Zelenskyy emphasized the importance of setting up a working mechanism for confiscating Russia’s $300 billion in frozen assets “to make the states that support terror understand that they will pay for it.”
On 15 June, the first Global Peace Summit will begin in Switzerland. Zelenskyy called the participation of the G7 countries in the event “a real step towards a just peace” for Ukraine country and the whole of Europe.
“I hope for your support in implementing the steps we have developed. And I also hope that the unity between the partners will remain on June 25, when we expect the negotiating framework with the EU to be adopted,” he stated.
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