President offered Netherlands patronage over Zaporizhzhia region

The President said this during a visit to Zaporizhzhia, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

“I asked the Netherlands to take patronage of our Zaporizhzhia region in terms of humanitarian needs - schools, bomb shelters, energy, shelters. This is important to us. It is important to us, and we have several examples with our partners in other regions. This is a really working model,” Zelensky said.

He added that the Netherlands has been supporting Ukraine since the first days of the full-scale war. The Netherlands is among the leaders of the defense coalition supporting Ukraine (Air Defense Coalition, F-16 Coalition).

“We are in Zaporizhzhia, and this is a very tangible evidence of the determination of the Netherlands and Prime Minister Dick Schoof to be here personally, a few dozen kilometers from the front line, and to work with us to protect human lives,” Zelensky emphasized.

Today, during a working visit to Zaporizhzhia, Zelensky and Schoof visited a school in Zaporizhzhia. “Mr. Prime Minister saw how our children, teachers, how they are happy to be able to return to offline learning, and here in Zaporizhzhia this is the first offline work in four years. First, there was a pandemic and distance learning, then the years of war began, and now we are returning to normalcy, the opportunity to study at school or university, to communicate, to gain knowledge and socialization. This is really an achievement for our country,” Zelensky said.

According to him, during his visit to Zaporizhzhia, he also discussed with the Prime Minister the issue of increasing protection against Russian terror.

“The key things are air defense, supplying Patriot, missiles, increasing the F16 fleet. We have ideas on this. As well as defense packages for Ukraine, shells, equipment, sanctions against Russia. Everything that prevents Russia from opening new fronts for Ukraine. We also discussed the need to build shelters, particularly in schools, and the need for safe transportation. We discussed the large shortage of buses for our children and other things we need. I informed about the situation in our energy sector, the consequences of Russian strikes, and today there is a new support package from the Netherlands,” Zelensky added.

He is confident that the more tangible Ukraine's resilience is, the more Ukrainian families will be able to return home.

As reported, Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in Zaporizhzhia on a working visit with the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Dick Schoof. They visited one of Zaporizhzhia's schools.