Zelenskyy planning to join D-Day and G7 events

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy aims to attend next month’s D-Day commemoration in France followed by the G7 meeting in Italy, two people familiar with the planning said.

Zelenskyy’s plans are particularly notable because he recently canceled foreign travel following Russia’s launch of a major offensive in the city of Kharkiv. But Ukraine is also in desperate need of continued support and global attention, and the trip would give him time with world leaders — including President Joe Biden — to plead his nation’s case.

The Ukrainian president’s schedule could always change, both people emphasized. But if all goes to plan, Zelenskyy is expected to use this trip to call, as he has in recent interviews, for more military support from the West and ask for NATO to shoot down Russian missiles like the United States and United Kingdom did when Iran attacked Israel. Zelenskyy will also demand that the U.S. and European countries seize Russian assets to help fund Ukraine’s defense and eventual reconstruction.

The Ukrainian leader’s presence in France will have immense symbolic resonance. World leaders will gather on the Normandy coast, where 80 years earlier nearly 133,000 troops from the U.S., U.K. and allied nations landed on the European mainland to defeat Nazi Germany — the largest amphibious invasion in military history. The event will commemorate the sacrifice it took to thwart Adolf Hitler’s march as his forces swallowed up the continent before facing stiff resistance from democracies and the Soviet Union.

At an American cemetery, Zelenskyy will be alongside Biden, Western leaders and a Russian representative as the head of a country under threat of being wiped off the map. Biden, who will use the moment to make an impassioned case for the protection of democracy worldwide, will surely boast about how he rallied allies to Ukraine’s cause after Russia’s Vladimir Putin ordered an all-out invasion.

Zelenskyy then plans to travel to the heel of Italy for the G7. For months, group members have debated the wisdom of using hundreds of billions of seized Russian assets to boost Ukraine’s defenses and economy, citing legal conundrums and a fear that Moscow could do the same to Western countries. The U.S. and U.K. have strongly backed the idea while some European members, namely Germany, are more skeptical.

The issue roiled an earlier G7 meeting of finance ministers, where European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde argued forcefully against the full seizure of Russian assets to loan to Ukraine.

Zelenskyy would likely use the opportunity with heads of state and governments to try to convince the doubters. "If the world has $300 billion — why not use it?" he said in January.

Eli Stokols contributed to this report.