France is preparing a new military aid package for Ukraine worth almost 200 million euros from the interest earned on frozen Russian assets, its defense minister said in an interview published on Sunday.
Sebastien Lecornu, a close ally of President Emmanuel Macron, in the interview with the Tribune Dimanche newspaper, 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 mobilize, thanks to the interests of frozen Russian assets, a new package of 195 million euros" for Ukraine, AFP quoted him as saying.
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.
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 next 2027 presidential elections "could be the subject of massive manipulations 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.
He 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."
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 destabilize Moldova" through its breakaway region of Transnistria.
With Macron and others urging EU states to ramp up defense 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-ization and robot-ization of armies," he added, also noting the roles of artificial intelligence and space.
