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KYIV, Ukraine: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday he will travel to the United States this week for talks on the potential US provision of long-range weapons, a day after US President Donald Trump warned Russia he may send Kyiv long-range Tomahawk missiles.
A meeting between Zelensky and Trump could take place as early as Friday, the Ukrainian president said, adding that he also would meet with defense and energy companies and members of Congress.
“The main topics will be air defense and our long-range capabilities, to maintain pressure on Russia,” Zelensky said.
He spoke at a meeting with EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas. He said he also would seek further US assistance to protect Ukraine’s electricity and gas networks, which have faced relentless Russian bombardment. The US visit follows what Zelensky described as a “very productive” phone call with Trump on Sunday. Trump later warned Russia that he may send Ukraine long-range Tomahawk missiles if Moscow doesn’t settle its war there soon. The missiles would allow Ukraine to strike deeper into Russian territory.
Moscow has expressed “extreme concern” over the US potentially providing Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin himself has previously suggested that the US supplying long-range missiles to Ukraine would seriously damage relations between Moscow and Washington.
Zelensky will join a Ukrainian delegation already in the US for preliminary talks, led by Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko. Russia has stepped up attacks in recent weeks targeting electricity and gas infrastructure ahead of winter, in an effort to cripple Ukraine’s power grid ahead of freezing temperatures to erode public morale. Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said the worst attacks early Monday using drones and missiles occurred around the Black Sea port of Odesa and in the northern Chernihiv region, where one person was killed.
Kallas, the EU’s top diplomat, pledged continued pressure on Moscow. She also expressed confidence that objections led by Hungary to a new Russia sanctions package would be overcome, even if the process drags on past a meeting of EU leaders next week. “On funding, the needs are enormous. We must help Ukraine defend itself so we don’t later spend even more repairing destroyed infrastructure,” Kallas said. “We are 27 member states, and 27 democracies, so debates take time ... I’m positive that, as before, we’ll achieve a decision.”

PARIS: Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy will serve jail time at a Paris prison from October 21, informed sources told AFP Monday, after a court last month sentenced him to five years behind bars for criminal conspiracy.
The 70-year-old, who will be the first French postwar leader and the first former head of a European Union country to go to jail, will serve time at the La Sante prison in Paris, they said.
Sarkozy, France’s leader from 2007 to 2012, was convicted in late September over a scheme for late Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi to fund his 2007 presidential run.
Extra security measures are expected to ensure his safety in prison, with Sarkozy possibly placed in a unit for vulnerable prisoners or held in solitary confinement.
Earlier Monday, he arrived at the financial prosecutor’s office in Paris to learn the details of his upcoming incarceration.
He arrived in a car with tinted windows, then left again three-quarters of an hour later without making a comment, AFP journalists saw.
An AFP photographer then saw him return home.
Sarkozy has denied the charges and appealed against his conviction.
The former president immediately appealed his conviction in September and a new trial is expected in the coming months.
The Paris appeals court has up to 18 months to organize it.
Once jailed, his lawyers can petition the appeals court for his release but he will remain in custody unless it decides otherwise.

‘Exceptional gravity’

During the trial, prosecutors argued Sarkozy and his aides, acting with his authority and in his name, struck a deal with Qaddafi in 2005 to illegally fund his victorious French presidential election bid two years later.
Investigators believe that in return, Qaddafi was promised help to restore his international image after the West blamed Tripoli for bombing a plane in 1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and another over Niger in 1989, killing hundreds of passengers.
Presiding judge Nathalie Gavarino said the offenses were of “exceptional gravity” and therefore ordered that Sarkozy actually be incarcerated.
The court’s ruling found Sarkozy was guilty of criminal conspiracy.
But it did not follow the conclusion of prosecutors that he was the beneficiary of the illegal campaign financing.
He was acquitted on separate charges of embezzling Libyan public funds, passive corruption and illicit financing of an electoral campaign.

Legal woes

Sarkozy has faced a litany of legal problems since his mandate ended.
The country’s top court last year upheld his conviction and one-year jail sentence for graft over attempting in 2014 to secure favors from a judge.
He served three months of that time with an electronic tag earlier this year, before being granted conditional release.
Separately, he has received a one-year jail term — six months in prison with another six months suspended — for illegal financing of his 2012 campaign.
He has filed a final appeal with France’s top court, which is to issue its ruling late next month.
Sarkozy has also faced repercussions beyond the courtroom, including losing his Legion of Honour — France’s highest distinction — following the graft conviction.
Legal woes aside, the man who styled himself as the “hyper-president” while in office, still enjoys considerable influence and popularity on the right of French politics and has been known to regularly meet President Emmanuel Macron.