The train left shortly before 8 p.m. the ghostly Przemysl station on the border between Poland and Ukraine on Tuesday, September 27. It is already pitch dark. The President of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, took her place in the secure wagon of the “Przemysl-kyiv”. The deputies accompanying him, too: the vice-president of the Assembly, the socialist Valérie Rabault, the presidents of the committees for defense (Thomas Gassilloud), for foreign affairs (Jean-Louis Bourlanges), for European affairs (Pieyre -Alexandre Anglade), and the deputy for French people living abroad, Anne Genetet, all four from the majority.
” The president “ invites them into its narrow compartment for a “aperitif” makeshift: a few Polish beers and crisps, bought on the road, at a gas station. The journey between the Polish border and the Ukrainian capital must last all night, you have to kill time. A fine storyteller, Jean-Louis Bourlanges recounts his memories of Giscardie and makes jokes about Ronald Reagan, while Yaël Braun-Pivet – who lived in Asia – and Anne Genetet, who lives in Singapore, evoke the life of expatriates.
kyiv train station in the early morning
The deputies also return to the issues of this trip, on the eve of a debate on Ukraine, which will be held on October 3 in the hemicycle, for the opening of the parliamentary session. “We must avoid the reversal of French opinion when it will be colder and there will be restrictions on the energy front, launches Pieyre-Alexandre Anglade. It goes through the testimony of what is happening there. »
The train enters kyiv station in the early morning, in the mist and humidity. Yaël Braun-Pivet is welcomed on the platform by her counterpart, the President of the Rada, Ruslan Stefanchuk, a friend of President Volodymyr Zelensky. Tall, massive figure, entirely dressed in black, he immediately takes her to the Chernihiv region, 80 kilometers from Chernobyl. The region, which has 400 kilometers of common border with Russia and Belarus, was one of the entry points for the Russians at the start of the war.
“The Russians are there to take everything you hold dear,” says the speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, which brings tears to the old women present
The city, adorned with two cathedrals as old as Saint Sophia in kyiv, was surrounded and bombarded. In front of the French deputies, received at the Oblast (headquarters of the administration), the governor, Vyacheslav Chaus, launches into a sinister count: several hundred civilians killed, a thousand kilometers of rutted roads, 5,000 houses destroyed, 85 buses schools put out of use. France, among others, is participating in the reconstruction effort.
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