The meeting, organized by Paris, lasted nearly three hours via videoconference.
Twenty-eight countries participated on Thursday in a follow-up meeting dedicated to supporting Ukraine, organized by France with the aim of doing more and better to confront Russia. Ukraine, several EU member states, the UK, the US, and Canada were represented at this ministerial meeting via videoconference, the French Ministry of the Armed Forces announced.
The meeting lasted nearly three hours, with a collective determination and a sense of urgency to do more, do better, and do differently for Ukraine. This follow-up meeting took place after the international meeting supporting Ukraine held in Paris on February 26, at the initiative of French President Emmanuel Macron.
The countries worked on eight areas on Thursday: increasing ammunition deliveries to Ukraine, destocking principles, cyber defense, protecting Ukraine’s border with Belarus, protecting vulnerable states, demining, industrial production in Ukraine, and the “9th coalition” on rearline strikes, as detailed in the statement.
They established a timetable during the meeting for each country to position themselves on each of the areas and laid out plans for technical working groups to reconvene within seven days and ministerial-level meetings to take place in April.
Paris has insisted for months on the need to redouble efforts to support Ukraine to counter Russia. During the February 26 meeting, Macron caused controversy by refusing to rule out the option of sending Western troops to Ukraine in the future, a stance that has divided opinions within allied nations.
In addition to Ukraine, Paris aims to support the countries in Central and Eastern Europe affected by the conflict. The French Minister of Foreign Affairs will visit Lithuania on Friday to meet with his Baltic counterparts and Dmytro Kouleba.
