Sandu to visit Kyiv on Jan. 12, Macron and Conte expected by summer

Moldovan President Maia Sandu will pay an official
visit to Ukraine on Jan. 12 in order to renew relations between the two countries,
she told the Deutsche Welle news agency in an interview broadcast on Jan. 5.
She pointed out that the Ukrainian and Moldovan presidents have not met for
four years. She and Zelensky will discuss regional security, EU integration
reforms, delineating borders, and hydroelectric power, she said. She visited
Ukraine in July 2019 as prime minister. Her visit to Kyiv will be her first
foreign trip as president.

French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to visit
Ukraine in the first half of this year, said Ihor Zhovkva, a deputy head of the
President’s Office, in an interview with the dt.ua news site published on Jan.
2. New economic projects are expected to be launched, he said. Italian Prime
Minister Giuseppe Conte is also expected to visit Kyiv in 2021, he added, in
light of their tight relations.

The new OSCE head, Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde,
will make Ukraine her first foreign visit in January, as reported by the
eurointegration.com.ua news site, citing the Facebook page of the Trilateral
Contact Group. She said she will support the work of the Group and the Normandy
Four to renew the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. “We are
counting on this visit being an important opportunity for the acting OSCE head
to see with her own eyes the consequences of the ongoing armed aggression and
temporary occupation by the Russian Federation of parts of Ukraine’s
territory,” the statement said. Linde will lead the OSCE for a one-year term.

Zenon Zawada: Numerous key figures will be visiting Kyiv this year, but we don’t see
any of them being game-changers. Nonetheless, it’s positive to see Ukraine as a
symbolic top priority for figures like Sandu and Linde.