PARIS — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed frustration at the discussion around sending peacekeeping troops to Ukraine shortly after leaving a crucial meeting with European leaders on Monday.
Scholz said he was “annoyed” by the debate around sending peacekeeping forces to Ukraine after the war is over, arguing that it is “highly inappropriate” to discuss it before a peace plan is decided upon.
Earlier in the day, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk ruled out sending any Polish troops to Ukraine, saying his country would help with logistics. French President Emmanuel Macron, who originally raised the idea, is for sending soldiers. The U.K. is also “ready and willing” to send troops, its Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Sunday.
Negotiations to end the war are taking place in Saudi Arabia between the United States and Russia, which invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Ukraine has been shut out of the talks.
“We welcome the fact that discussions are taking place to work out a peace plan, but one thing is certain: This does not mean that Ukraine has to accept what it is presented with,” Scholz told reporters in front of the German embassy in Paris.
Scholz was the first leader to leave the Paris meeting, which was called over the weekend as Europe scrambled to find a unified response to the challenges raised by Donald Trump’s latest foreign policy moves.
Scholz also threw his weight behind a plan to make EU rules more flexible in order to allow countries to spend more on arms.
Under this proposal, which Commission President Ursula von der Leyen backed at last week’s Munich Security Conference, countries would be able to exempt defense spending from EU rules which require them to keep their budget deficits levels below the equivalent of 3 percent of their GDP.
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