France vows support for Ukraine's plan to end Russian invasion

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot pledged his support for Ukraine’s plan for ending the 2 1/2-year war with Russia, telling reporters in Kyiv on Saturday that he will work with Ukrainian officials to secure other nations’ backing for the proposal.

Unveiled by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier this week, Kyiv’s so-called “victory plan” hopes to compel Russia to end its invasion of Ukraine through negotiations.

The proposal is being considered by Ukraine’s Western partners, whose help is vital for Kyiv to resist its bigger neighbor. A key element would be a formal invitation into NATO, which Western backers have been reluctant to consider until after the war ends.

“A Russian victory would be a consecration for the law of the strongest and would push the international order toward chaos,” Barrot said at a joint press conference with his Ukrainian counterpart, Andrii Sybiha. “That is why our exchanges should allow us to make progress on President Zelenskyy’s victory plan and rally the greatest number possible of countries around it.”

Since the 2022 invasion, France has been one of Ukraine’s staunchest military, diplomatic and economic supporters in Europe. It is currently training and equipping what will become a full new brigade of Ukrainian soldiers for front-line deployment.

French President Emmanuel Macron has also previously pushed for a policy shift from Ukraine’s Western allies that could change the complexion of the war — allowing Kyiv to strike military bases inside Russia with sophisticated long-range weapons provided by Western partners, which include missiles from France.

Long-range strikes are a key part of Zelenskyy’s five-point plan but have been met with reluctance by Kyiv’s allies so far.

Barrot also announced that France would deliver the first batch of Mirage 2000 combat jets to Ukraine in the first three months of 2025, with Ukrainian pilots and mechanics also trained to fly and maintain them.

“By resisting against the invader with exceptional courage, you are not only fighting for Ukraine’s territorial integrity, but you are also holding a front line that separates Europe from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, that separates freedom from oppression,” the French minister said in Kyiv.

Russia and Ukraine exchange POWs

Barrot’s visit coincided with a prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine late Friday night that included 190 POWs traded by the two sides under a deal negotiated by the United Arab Emirates.

Among the 95 Ukrainians were 34 Azov fighters who defended Mariupol and the Azovstal steelworks, the fortress-like plant in the now-occupied city of Mariupol where their last-ditch stand became a symbol of resistance against Moscow’s invasion.

“Ninety-five of our people are home again. These are the warriors who defended Mariupol and ‘Azovstal,’ as well as the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Kherson regions,” Zelenskyy wrote in a post on X.

The head of the Azov Brigade, Denys Prokopenko, said on Facebook that 34 Azov fighters had been returned, but that another 900 remained in Russian captivity.

A well-known Ukrainian human rights activist and service member, Maksym Butkevych, was also among the 95 exchanged. His release was announced by the ZMINA Human Rights Center, the organization that he co-founded.

The swap follows the repatriation of 501 dead soldiers to Ukraine Friday in what appeared to be the biggest repatriation of war dead since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Most of the soldiers were killed in action in the eastern Donetsk region of Ukraine, mostly around the city of Avdiivka that Russian forces captured in February after a long and grueling battle, Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said in a statement.

Russia also received the bodies of 89 of its soldiers, Russian lawmaker Shamsayil Saraliyev told reporters.

Elsewhere, the Russian Ministry of Defense said that it shot down 16 Ukrainian drones over Russia’s Bryansk, Rostov, and Belgorod regions in the early hours of Saturday morning.

Local social media channels shared images that appeared to show a blaze at a factory in the Bryansk region specializing in microelectronics. Russian authorities did not confirm the strike.

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Associated Press writers John Leicester in Le Pecq, France, and Katie Marie Davies in Manchester, England, contributed to this report. ___

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine