The European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell arrived in Kharkiv. He announced his visit on his personal page on Twitter.
According to a high-ranking official, he flew to Ukraine on the evening of January 4.
"My first visit in 2022 is to Stanytsya Luhanska and Kyiv, #Ukraine," he wrote.
The politician also specified that he flew to Ukraine against the background of the build-up of the Russian military on the Ukrainian border.
"With Russia’s increased military build-up, I am here to show EU support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and to support sustained reform efforts that are key for resilience," Borrel stressed.
He also published a photo from Kharkiv International Airport.
The European Union wants a more active and influential position in the Ukrainian conflict. It rejects that, as happened in the Cold War, solutions are cooked between Washington and Moscow and is beginning to make movements to avoid it, also in the field of gestures, which count so much in foreign relations. On Tuesday night the high representative for EU Foreign Policy landed in Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine, and this Wednesday he will visit with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dmytro Kuleva, the conflict zone, where exchanges of information are still common. shooting between pro-Russian separatists and the Ukrainian military. It is the first time that the head of European diplomacy has approached that front line and the stay in the country will last three days, long for the usual codes in this type of travel.
The visit comes just after the Christmas break, which came after a European Council in which the heads of state and government of the EU member countries launched a forceful threat to Russia: there will be “huge” sanctions if Ukraine invades, something that will be He fears after learning that Putin has deployed 110,000 troops to the border. Before taking the plane to Ukraine, the High Representative had a conversation with the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, to discuss “the concentration of Russian troops on the border with Ukraine and the two draft treaties on security guarantees directed by Russia to the United States and the members of the Atlantic Alliance ”, according to a statement issued by the European External Action Service. The objective is to show that the European Union rejects the bilateral solution that Vladimir Putin wants.