The European Commission chief and the EU's top diplomat will meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv on Friday to offer financial and moral support in a capital gradually reawakening after Russian forces withdrew from its outskirts.
Travelling by train from Brussels to Kyiv, Josep Borrell, the European Union's chief diplomat, told reporters the visit was a signal that "Ukraine is in control of its territory" and the government was still in charge.
"Ukraine is not a country invaded, dominated. There is still a government (which) receives people from outside and you can travel to Kyiv," Borrell said, adding he hoped the EU would offer another 500 million euros ($543.25 million) to Kyiv in the coming days.
He also said the trip would allow the bloc to outline the measures the EU has taken to "isolate Russia" over its six-week-old invasion of Ukraine, a war Moscow describes as a "special operation" to "denazify" its neighbour.
Zelenskiy rejects Moscow's assertion, and says the war raging in parts of his country for the last six weeks is a direct attack on not only Ukraine's existence, but also on the security of Europe as a whole.
As the EU leaders were poised to arrive, more than 30 people were killed and over 100 wounded in a Russian rocket strike on a railway station in east Ukraine as civilians tried to evacuate to safer parts of the country, the state railway company said.
