On Friday, at the Made in France fair in Paris, Marine Le Pen said she is willing to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and that the place she proposes is Brussels. “Yes, if I can meet him in Brussels, I will tell the Ukrainian ambassador,” the Rassemblement National leader and presidential candidate said, News.ro reports after AFP. This is not a meeting that has been set. It is an offer made to reporters.

Brussels, she added, seems right to her because “the problem of financing Ukraine is one that is shaking Europe today.” She put the phrase on the German chancellor: he “is starting to threaten one side and the other.” Franceinfo gives the context: on Tuesday the prime ministers of Slovakia and the Czech Republic criticised Friedrich Merz’s idea of tying talks on the next European budget to a commitment by all 27 states to take part in financing Ukraine. “Threat” remains her word, not a description from the chancellery.

The offer is meant to be passed on Monday, 16 November, when Le Pen is scheduled to meet Ukraine’s ambassador to France, Vadym Omelchenko, behind closed doors, Le Figaro and franceinfo write. Friday’s reports carry no reply from Kyiv accepting Brussels. Politico notes that Zelensky wants to persuade her to keep support for Ukraine if she becomes president. Earlier he had invited her to Kyiv, in an interview with L’Express, and said she would change her mind if she met Ukrainians. Also in Politico: she has put French aid at 6 billion euro a year, a figure Zelensky has challenged, and he has called the military partnership a “win-win”.

Her position if she wins in 2027 is already on the record. Le Figaro and franceinfo quote her: she would keep the financial aid for six months, then stop it. To Belgian television VRT she tied the stop to money: “we don’t have the money.” In the polls she is the favourite to follow Emmanuel Macron, the same papers write; a poll is not a result. She recalled that the Union has already started paying out 90 billion euro for Kyiv. The sum is in her remark, not in an account checked here. Opponents regularly accuse her of being soft on Moscow; that is their charge, not a finding of Friday’s exchange.

Image: Wikimedia Commons — the exhibition park at Porte de Versailles, seen in 2022 from the Paris Convention Centre, photograph by Artvill (CC BY-SA 4.0). That is where she spoke on Friday. The frame is not from the 13 November fair and does not show a meeting with Zelensky.

Sources consulted: Marine Le Pen is open to a meeting with Zelensky, which she proposes in Brussels — News.ro; Marine Le Pen open to a meeting with Zelensky in Brussels — Le Figaro; Le Pen offers to meet Zelenskyy in Brussels — Politico.