Ukraine's quest to join the EU received an important boost on Thursday as French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi arrived in Kyiv on a landmark visit.
The trio visited the devastated ruins of the town of Irpin and then moved to Kyiv for a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “You have all seen these images in this devastated city which is at the same time a heroic city since it is here, among other places that Ukrainian men and women stopped the Russian army from descending on Kyiv," Mr Macron declared. "So it represents the heroism of the army but also of the Ukrainian population and alongside that, you also have the traces, the stigmata of barbarism.”
The European Commission is expected to make a recommendation on Ukraine's status as an EU candidate on Friday, something the biggest European nations had long resisted.
Mr Macron said it was time for Europe to reassure Ukraine over its EU ambitions. “We are at a point when we need to send clear political signals, us Europeans, towards Ukraine and its people when it is resisting heroically,” he said.
