France is to allocate nearly €200 million in military aid to Ukraine, funded by interest from frozen Russian assets, as part of its ongoing support for Kyiv against the Russian invasion.
France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine worth almost €200 million from the interest earned on frozen Russian assets, the defence minister said in an interview published on Sunday.
In the interview with the Tribune Dimanche newspaper, Sebastien Lecornu described the suspension of US weapons deliveries to Ukraine as a "heavy blow" to Kyiv's fight against the Russian invasion.
"This year we will mobilise, thanks to the interests of frozen Russian assets, a new package of 195 million euros" for Ukraine, Lecornu said.
This will enable the delivery of 155-millimetre shells as well as AASM air to surface weapons that arm the French Mirage 2000 fighter jets that Paris has delivered to Ukraine for the war.
Posting on social media platform X, Lecornu said: "We are not at war; we want to guarantee peace on our continent. Without naivety or excitement. We must re-establish our defence effort to face the period of disruption we are going through".
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Russia targeting democracy, economy
Lecornu did not make any comment on whether France would consider using the frozen Russian assets themselves to help Kyiv, a potentially far more significant move supported by its ally the UK but over which Paris as so far been wary.
But he warned that away from the battlefield, the "Russians are reinventing war, that is their great strength" by targeting "our democracy and our economy".
France's 2027 presidential elections "could be the subject of massive manipulation, as was the case in Romania" where the first round was topped by a far-right outsider, only for the results to be annulled by the constitutional court, he said.
Lecornu also sought to play down any rupture in transatlantic relations after Donald Trump won the US presidency and changed Washington's policy on Ukraine, saying: "For my part, I still consider them as allies, despite their great unpredictability".
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Turning to the "heavy blow" of the US suspension of weapons deliveries to Ukraine, he said: "They [Ukraine] can hold out for a while, but this suspension must not last".
Lecornu said that French intelligence had no indication that Russia was planning to attack a NATO member in the next five years but did say there is a "temptation to destabilise Moldova" through its breakaway region of Transnistria.
With President Emmanuel Macron and others urging EU states to ramp up defence spending as the US wavers, Lecornu pointed to ammunition and electronic warfare as the most urgent issues for France's military in the years to come.
"Second priority, is the drone-isation and robot-isation of armies," he added, also noting the roles of artificial intelligence and space.
