In an interview with Le Monde and French news channel BFM-TV on Monday, March 11, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rejected the idea of a "pause" in the fighting, which would only give Vladimir Putin "oxygen."

I've just come from a meeting with senior military officers: the situation on the front is much better than it was for these last three months. We've had difficulties due to the lack of artillery ammunition, anti-aircraft defense, long-range weapons and the density of Russian drones. We have done good work against the Russian air force, we have re-established the situation in the East, and the Russian advance has been halted.

It's true that the Russians destroyed Avdiivka [a town in the Donbas that fell on February 17] and took territory, but today they can no longer advance, having lost a large number of aircraft. In the Black Sea, we are carrying out powerful action. I won't go into detail, but I have received a report indicating very significant positive results.

We have to be realistic: We can't be positive while this war is going on. We will be when we have won. But today, we have stopped the Russian advance in eastern Ukraine and they are suffering heavy losses. Why am I not more positive? Because maybe tomorrow, a week or a month from now, the Russians could receive another million rounds of ammunition when the ones we're counting on aren't there.

We'll discuss this in detail when he comes to Kyiv shortly. I would like to thank the five G7 countries, including France, that have signed security agreements with Ukraine. What's most important is what was discussed in Paris: In the field of cyberdefense, his proposal is positive, we're already working with partners. This is not a military presence, but specialists exchanging data and intelligence.

What [Macron] wants is for Ukraine not to find itself alone with one or two partners; he wants a coalition around Ukraine. Then, in the field of training, it's no secret that there have been training missions, for artillery, as well as for armor, defense systems, F16s and combat aircraft training.

But Emmanuel [Macron] knows very well that when we send our soldiers out for training, when they come back, they also have to adapt to the Ukrainian environment and continue their training there. This process takes twice as long, from the moment we send someone off for training to their being operationally capable on the battlefield. The proposal to reduce this training time, to conduct it entirely in Ukraine while directly adapting it to the state of war, is a good thing. It didn't mean that the French army was going to intervene in Ukraine, we're only talking about training, in various fields.

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