Pressure on the European powers for even more military assistance, including fighter jets, Ukraine is its main purpose Vladimir Zelensky on his second trip abroad since the start of the war, following a visit to the United States last December.

The first stop on his European tour, which began yesterday and will end today, was London, where the Ukrainian president was sworn in at a joint session of the House of Commons and the House of Lords in Westminster. In a symbolic gesture, he presented the speaker of the House of Commons with a Ukrainian pilot’s helmet with the inscription “We have freedom, give us wings to protect it.” The case spoke for itself, but Zelensky tried to formulate the request of his country: “I appeal to you and the whole world with simple but extremely important words: give Ukraine fighter jets, wings of freedom.”

The UK government, like the governments of the US, France and Germany, does not see the delivery of fighter jets to Ukraine as the right move at this stage, although British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace has hinted that this could change in the coming months. . Yesterday, a government spokesman in London said the UK intended to begin training Ukrainian pilots on NATO aircraft as soon as possible, adding that if a decision was made to send fighter jets to Kiev, it would be a “long-term” rather than immediate prospect.

During his short stay in London, Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and King Charles. In the afternoon, he headed to Paris, where he was to meet French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the Elysee Palace. Today the Ukrainian leader will be in Brussels to attend the European Union summit. Providing the Europeans with even more powerful weapons systems is his main goal as the Russian military ramps up its efforts to seize the entire industrial region of Donbass in eastern Ukraine.

The fall of the Boeing

Meanwhile, an international team of investigators investigating the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in 2014, when the fatal Boeing flew over the territory of Ukraine controlled by Russian-speaking separatists, completed its investigative work yesterday after eight and a half years in The Hague. . Dutch prosecutor Digna van Botselaar said the team had gathered “strong evidence” that Putin had personally approved the supply of anti-aircraft missiles like the one that caused the downing to Russian-speaking rebels. However, these testimonies are not categorical evidence of the involvement of the Russian president, and therefore cannot serve as a basis for his criminal prosecution by an international court.