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French President Emmanuel Macron is meeting Germany’s Olaf Scholz in Berlin after a rift was exposed over Europe’s response to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The French leader has warned that the “security of Europe and the French is at stake in Ukraine” and if Russia wins Europe’s will be “reduced to zero”.
But Mr Scholz has been far more cautious, ruling out the deployment of Germany’s Taurus cruise missiles.
Ukraine faces a critical arms shortage.
The German chancellor has come under pressure to extend his government’s help, because a $60bn (£47bn; €55bn) US military aid package for Ukraine has been blocked in Congress by Republicans on the right.
Germany remains Europe’s biggest source of military aid for Ukraine, but Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who is joining the two leaders in Berlin later, has said it is now up to their three countries to “mobilise all of Europe” to provide Ukraine with help.
“True solidarity with Ukraine? Less words, more ammunition,” he posted on social media on Friday.
Differences between Paris and Berlin have deepened in recent weeks, after the German chancellor said long-range Taurus missiles would need German soldiers on the ground in Ukraine to look after them.
President Macron has equally angered some of his European partners by suggesting that sending Western troops could not be ruled out.
In an extended live interview on French TV on Thursday night he said it was not his wish, although “all these options are possible”.
Stressing that France was a force for peace, he warned that Russia was seeking to extend its power and would not stop now: “If we leave Ukraine alone, if we let Ukraine lose this war, then for sure Russia will threaten Moldova, Romania and Poland.”
Ahead of Friday’s meeting of the three leaders, billed as a bid to revive the so-called “Weimar Triangle”, the German chancellor told Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky over the phone that the summit was of great importance to “organise as much support as possible for Ukraine”.
Mr Zelensky went on social media to say he had told the German leader that Ukraine’s priorities were “armoured vehicles, artillery, and air defence”.
Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned on Thursday that Ukrainians were “not running out of courage, they are running out of ammunition”, more than two years after Russia’s full-scale invasion began.
He said the shortage was one of the reasons why Russia had made recent advances on the battlefield, and he called on Nato allies to provide Ukraine with what it needed.
A Czech-led initiative to source weapons from outside Europe has already raised enough funds to buy at least 300,000 shells and Prague officials say the first deliveries will arrive by June at the latest.
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