France pledges to help Ukraine survive difficult winter

Pierre Heilbronn, the French President's Commissioner for Economic Assistance and Reconstruction in Ukraine, has stated that France promises to assist Ukraine in surviving a challenging winter.

Source: Heilbronn in a comment to Ukrinform, as reported by European Pravda 

Details: Pierre Heilbronn noted that he had just returned from New York, where strategic discussions on the energy of Ukraine were held.

Quote: "At the same time, France is already active in this sector. A week and a half ago, I travelled to Kyiv with French companies to assess what they can do in terms of equipment, including gas turbines and energy storage solutions," Heilbronn said.

According to him, this concerns energy aid and investments from a specially created fund, with France contributing €60 million euros by the end of the year.

"We have equipment, such as generators and transformers, which were provided as aid. But there are also investment projects supported by the state. We have created a civil infrastructure fund with 200 million euros allocated for it. At least 60 million of it will go to the energy sector by the end of 2024. And these are funds for companies with at least 50% French capital," he explained.

Among such significant corporations, Heilbronn mentioned Schneider Electric, which has been working with Ukrainian energy companies Ukrenergo and DTEK since the beginning of the full-scale war, particularly with equipment for powergrid repairs.

"There are also other big players like Arabelle Solutions [a subsidiary of EDF, a French state-owned energy company]. It is leading projects for the winter, such as batteries for energy storage and gas turbines to increase the capacity of power plants," he explained.

The foreign ministers of the Group of Seven (G7) countries recently reiterated their support for Ukraine in the face of Russian attacks on energy infrastructure.

Josep Borrell, the head of European diplomacy, stated that Russia is attempting to damage Ukraine's energy infrastructure on the brink of winter, meaning that Western partners should increase the provision of air defence systems to Ukraine.

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