Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky will officially visit Spain in the coming days, according to government sources. The visit, the exact date of which was not revealed for security reasons, resumes a previous one that had to be canceled in April this year so that the Ukrainian leader could attend the funeral of Pope Francis in the Vatican.
Although the program of the trip has not been announced and is still being worked on, a visit to the Reina Sofía National Art Center Museum to see the Guernica by Picasso, a work of art that has become an international symbol of the rejection of war.
During a previous visit to Spain, in 2022, Zelenskyj gave a speech in front of the Cortes in which he referred to the bombing of the Basque city by German troops during the Civil War to compare it with the situation in his country, attacked by Russia: “We are in April 2022, but it seems that we are in April 1937”.
The Spanish government will take advantage of the Ukrainian president’s visit to express its full support and the need to continue putting pressure on Russia, according to the same sources.
On October 21, Zelensky agreed in a telephone conversation with Pedro Sánchez to hold a new meeting between the two, although the location and date were not revealed at that time. In that conversation, the Ukrainian president thanked Spain for Spain’s announced shipment of 70 generators to support the reconstruction of the country’s energy system in the face of continued Russian bombing.
“We have agreed on a new meeting and new measures to support our country, Ukrainians and our common European security,” Zelensky said.
On that occasion, Sánchez explained in a message on the social network
The meeting between the two leaders took place shortly after they had both signed, together with other European leaders, a declaration to support the US position in favor of an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine and to start negotiations with the line of contact and the inviolability of international borders as the starting point.
From a visit to Madrid in May 2024, the Ukrainian president made an agreement according to which Spain would contribute 1,000 million euros in military aid, in addition to the 330 it had already provided to Kiev since the invasion began in March 2022, according to the Kiel Institute (Germany). In an appearance in La Moncloa, Zelensky praised the Spanish government as a “reliable partner, which did not turn a blind eye” to the Russian invasion, “nor was it weak when difficult political decisions had to be made,” and thanked the new supply of weapons, especially armored vehicles and missiles.
