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U.S. announces more aid for Ukraine at “critical moment” in war with Russia, but Zelenskyy says more is needed
Ramstein Air Base, Germany — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rarely attends the security summits organized by his Western partners in person, but on Friday, he paid his first visit to the sprawling Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin declared in his opening remarks of the latest such meeting that “it is a critical moment” in the war ignited by Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion.
The gathering of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group comes days after Zelenskyy’s nation suffered its single worst attack of the year, when two ballistic missiles slammed into a military academy in Poltava, killing dozens of people and wounding more than 170 others.
The meeting in Germany also comes on the heels of a wider, blistering Russian barrage of missile and drone attacks across Ukraine. It comes after Ukraine announced the fatal crash of an F-16 fighter jet during that barrage. And it comes one month after Ukrainian forces invaded Russia’s western Kursk region, seizing hundreds of square miles of territory.
“The Kremlin’s army of aggression is now on the defensive on its own turf,” Austin said Friday of the Kursk offensive.
“This is the land from which Putin was preparing to expand the war into Ukrainian territory. He was preparing to launch a new offense against our city of Sumy,” said Zelenskyy.
The Ukrainian president has said controlling that Russian ground has created a buffer zone between President Vladimir Putin’s forces and Ukrainian territory. But if he was hoping the incursion would force Putin to divert his troops from the battlefields of eastern Ukraine, that hasn’t happened.
“This is a clear choice by Moscow,” Zelenskyy said. “Putin wants more Ukraine to occupy than human security. He doesn’t care about Russian land and people. He just wants to grab as much of our land and as many of our cities as possible.”
On the overnight flight from Andrews Airforce Base near Washington to Ramstein, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Charles “CQ” Brown spoke of the Kursk incursion as just one part of Ukraine’s war strategy.
“What they’ve been able to do in Kursk is to be able to stay successful there and at the same time be able to protect their key lines of communication at Pokrovsk,” he said. “So, it’s a combination of us working with them to identify the capabilities that they have, how they use the forces that they do have, to be successful in both of those areas.”
Ukraine has been losing ground around Pokrovsk, however, and the fall of that logistics hub to Russia would threaten critical supply lines for Ukrainian forces already struggling to hold parts of the roughly 600-mile front line in eastern Ukraine.
It’s a vulnerability that U.S. forces are keeping a close eye on.
“The Russians have been pushing toward their defensive lines and [they’re] starting to gain territory, so what we’re really paying attention to is the rate of advance by the Russians, and when they can get into range of artillery,” said Brown. “This is something we’ll continue to watch on and continue to work with Ukrainians, [on] how to defend that territory.”
Andreas Arnold/picture alliance/Getty
In his own opening remarks at Ramstein, Zelenskyy struck a familiar refrain, stressing that his country needs more air defense systems and more long-range weapons, and soon.
“Thank you so much again,” he told the gathered Western military commanders, “but the number of air defense systems have not yet been delivered easily. This is what was agreed upon, and this is what has not been fully delivered. The world has now systems to ensure that Russian terror does not have results.”
The summit at Ramstein is the 24th meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, but it’s only the second one Zelenskyy has attended in person.
A major shakeup this week of his war-time cabinet has raised questions at home and among Western partners alike. It included the dismissal of Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who had become the most familiar face of Ukraine’s foreign policy since the start of the war.
Even before the day of meetings got underway, Austin was the first of the allies to pledge additional support.
“I’m pleased to say that President Biden will announce today and additional $250 million security assistance package for Ukraine,” he said. “It will surge in more capabilities to meet Ukraine’s evolving requirements, and we’ll deliver them at the speed of war.”
The speed of the war is accelerating on both sides, however, and Zelenskyy has made it clear that his country can afford little time to wait.
France’s anti-terrorism court on Friday convicted eight people of involvement in the beheading of teacher Samuel Paty outside his school near Paris four years ago, a horrific death that shocked the country.
Paty, 47, was killed by an Islamic extremist outside his school on Oct. 16, 2020, days after showing his class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad during a debate on free expression. The assailant, an 18-year-old Russian of Chechen origin, was shot to death by police.
Those who have been on trial on terrorism charges at a special court in Paris since the end of November were accused, in some cases, of providing assistance to the perpetrator and, in others, of organizing a hate campaign online before the murder took place.
STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP via Getty Images
The 540-seat courtroom was packed for the verdict, which marked the final chapter of the Paty trial. Heavy surveillance was in place, with more than 50 police officers guarding the proceedings.
Seated in the front row was Paty’s 9-year-old son, accompanied by family members. As the lead judge, Franck Zientara, delivered sentences one after the other, emotions in the room ran high.
“I am moved, and I am relieved,” said Gaëlle Paty, Samuel Paty’s sister, as she addressed a crowd of reporters after the verdict. “Hearing the word ‘guilty’ — that’s what I needed.”
“I spent this week listening to a lot of rewriting of what happened, and it was hard to hear, but now the judge has stated what really happened, and it feels good,” she added, her voice breaking as tears filled her eyes.
Families of the accused reacted with gasps, cries, shouts, and ironic clapping, prompting the judge to pause multiple times and call for silence.
“They lied about my brother,” shouted one relative. Another woman, sobbing, exclaimed, “They took my baby from me,” before being escorted out by police officers.
The seven-judge panel met or went above most of the terms requested by prosecutors, citing “the exceptional gravity of the facts.”
Naïm Boudaoud, 22, and Azim Epsirkhanov, 23, friends of the attacker, were convicted of complicity in murder and sentenced to 16 years in prison each. Neither can be paroled for two thirds of their term, about 10 years. Boudaoud was accused of driving the attacker to the school, while Epsirkhanov helped him procure weapons.
Brahim Chnina, 52, the Muslim father of the schoolgirl whose lies sparked the events leading to Paty’s death, was sentenced to 13 years for association with a terrorist enterprise. Prosecutors had sought 10 years for him.
Abdelhakim Sefrioui, a Muslim preacher, was given 15 years for organizing a hate campaign online against Paty.
The shocking death of the 47-year-old teacher left an indelible mark on France, with several schools now named after him.
The trial had begun in late November. The defendants were accused of assisting a perpetrator or organizing a hate campaign online in lead-up to the murder.
At the time of the attack, there were protests in many Muslim countries and calls online for violence targeting France and the satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo. The newspaper had republished its caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad a few weeks before Paty’s death to mark the opening of the trial over deadly 2015 attacks on its newsroom by Islamic extremists.
The cartoon images deeply offended many Muslims, who saw them as sacrilegious. But the fallout from Paty’s killing reinforced the French state’s commitment to freedom of expression and its firm attachment to secularism in public life.
Chnina’s daughter, who was 13 at the time, claimed that she had been excluded from Paty’s class when he showed the caricatures on Oct. 5, 2020.
Chnina sent a series of messages to his contacts denouncing Paty, saying that “this sick man” needed to be fired, along with the address of the school in the Paris suburb of Conflans Saint-Honorine. In reality, Chnina’s daughter had lied to him and had never attended the lesson in question.
Paty was teaching a class mandated by the National Education Ministry on freedom of expression. He discussed the caricatures in this context, saying students who did not wish to see them could temporarily leave the classroom.
An online campaign against Paty snowballed, and 11 days after the lesson, Anzorov attacked the teacher with a knife as he walked home, and displayed the teacher’s head in a post on social media. Police later fatally shot Anzorov as he advanced toward them, armed.
Chnina’s daughter was tried last year in a juvenile court and given an 18-month suspended sentence. Four other students at Paty’s school were found guilty of involvement and given suspended sentences; a fifth, who pointed out Paty to Anzorov in exchange for money, was given a 6-month term with an electronic bracelet.
Sefrioui, the preacher on trial, had presented himself as a spokesperson for Imams of France although he had been dismissed from that role. He had filmed a video in front of the school with the father of the student. He referred to the teacher as a “thug” multiple times and sought to pressure the school administration via social media.
Some of the defendants expressed regrets and claimed their innocence on the eve of the verdict. They did not convince Paty’s family.
“It’s something that really shocks the family,” lawyer Virginie Le Roy said ahead of the verdicts. “You get the feeling that those in the box are absolutely unwilling to admit any responsibility whatsoever.”
“Apologies are pointless, they won’t bring Samuel back, but explanations are precious to us,” Le Roy said. “We haven’t had many explanations of the facts.”
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