In kyiv, Donald Tusk emphasizes his support for Ukraine in its fight against “evil”

Photo: Press service of the Ukrainian presidency Agence France-Presse Donald Tusk and Volodymyr Zelensky also mentioned the competitive problem between Polish and Ukrainian truckers.

Stanislaw Waszak – Agence France-Presse, Emmanuel Peuchot – Agence France-Presse, Stanislav Doshchitsyn – Agence France-Presse In kyiv, Kramatorsk and Warsaw

1:32 p.m.

• Europe

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk hammered home his support for Ukraine, engaged according to him in a fight “between good and evil” against Russia, Monday during a visit to Kiev, where he also discussed the competitive problem between Polish and Ukrainian truckers.

“I am not ashamed to use big words: it is here, in Ukraine, that the global front between good and evil passes,” Tusk said at a joint press conference with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

In recent weeks, several European officials have marched in kyiv to try to reassure Ukraine of the sustainability of their support.

The future of this financial and military aid seems uncertain, however, because it is at the center of political divisions in Europe as in the United States.

In this context, Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed “a new package of Polish defense measures”.

Mr. Tusk said Warsaw and kyiv would “invest together” in companies based in the two countries, whose production will “increase Polish, Ukrainian and European defense capabilities.”

Road blockade

The leaders also discussed tensions at their common border, blocked from November until last week by Polish truckers denouncing unfair competition from their Ukrainian colleagues.

On this subject, Volodymyr Zelensky affirmed that “solidarity with Ukraine should not be hindered by any obstacle whatsoever”.

The blocking of these routes, important for Ukrainian exports, had created a thorny economic problem for kyiv.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Chmygal assured that the problem of “free movement of goods” was “solved”.

The truckers suspended their movement while awaiting the results of talks with the new government in kyiv and Brussels and the expected steps of the new coalition in power.

Mr. Tusk assured that kyiv and Warsaw would find “good solutions” to the trucking problem as well as to the issue of Ukrainian wheat, competition for which worries Polish farmers.

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Drone attack

Hours before the visit was announced, kyiv said Russian forces had attacked Ukraine with eight Iranian-designed drones, but its air defense systems had shot them down.

This attack follows Ukrainian operations against regions bordering Russia, targeting oil storage facilities.

Sources in the Ukrainian security sector have claimed responsibility for some of these attacks to AFP, but Kiev and the Ukrainian army remain discreet about the operations carried out inside Russia.

On Monday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, however, attributed responsibility to Kiev for a fire that occurred last weekend in the port of Ust-Luga, near Saint Petersburg .

Although the sprawling front line across eastern and southern Ukraine has remained largely unchanged for a year, Russian forces continue to shell towns and villages near the fighting.

In the North-East, in Kupiansk, bombings left one dead and one injured, said Oleg Sinegoubov, the regional governor.

At least one person was killed and two others injured in a strike Monday morning in an industrial zone in Kramatorsk, in the east of the country.

In front of an administrative building, with a destroyed roof and blown out windows, the street and sidewalks were dotted with shrapnel impacts from a rocket or missile, journalists noted from AFP.

In another street running along one side of the building, the body of a dead man lay at the wheel of his car, the left front door of which was open.

According to Serguiï, 41, owner of a garage located just behind the affected building, the building housed municipal administration offices before the war. “Lately, some people were saying there were soldiers there, but who knows?,” he told AFP.

The authorities never specify when strikes hit military sites.

Located around twenty km from the front, the town of Kramatorsk is regularly hit by Russian missile fire.