French foreign minister Catherine Colonna paid an unannounced visit to Kyiv on Tuesday in a show of support for Ukraine just as the EU said it would sanction those involved in organising "illegal" Russian referendums to annex four eastern regions of the country, reports Radio France Internationale.
"Good morning Ukraine, it's good to be back," she wrote on Twitter earlier on Tuesday, posting a picture of herself walking in Kyiv with the French ambassador to Ukraine, Etienne de Poncins.
It is the minister's third visit since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.
During her visit, Colonna met with her Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba and with Ukraine's top prosecutor Andriy Kostin.
The minister said her trip was intended to demonstrate France's solidarity with the Ukainian people and to support Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Her visit "underlines the strengthening of the support provided by France, both in terms of the supply of defense equipment and the fight against impunity and on the financial and humanitarian levels", the ministry statement said prior to the trip.
It made reference to the "A boat for Ukraine" operation set to leave Marseille on 28 September with "more than 1,000 tonnes of aid on board".
She also announced that France will bear the 14-million-euro transport and distribution costs of a cargo of cereals offered by Ukraine to Somalia, threatened by famine.
France has already created a unit of investigators responsible for centralising files investigating suspicions of war crimes in Ukraine.