Catherine Colonna, the foreign minister of France, arrived in Odesa, a significant port city on the Black Sea coast of Ukraine, on Thursday as part of efforts to strengthen relations between the two countries and discuss Ukraine’s needs going forward.
The city’s historic centre has been listed as a ‘World Heritage in Danger’ site by UNESCO, the U.N. agency for culture.
Colonna arrived in Odesa not long after missile attacks targeted vital power infrastructure facilities in the neighbourhood, resulting in blackouts in the city. She needed to go to one of the damaged locations.
The purpose of the visit is to send a message to Moscow in response to Western concerns that Russia, nearly a year after invading Ukraine, might still be planning to attack the city in order to deny Ukraine access to its main maritime market for grain products.
‘If Russia’s goal is really to deny Ukraine any access to the sea, one day it will have to go as far as Odesa,’ a French diplomatic source told reporters prior to the visit. ‘Odesa, moreover, is the gateway to destabilise even more Moldova, Romania, and the European territory as a whole.’
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