German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron have called for secondary sanctions aimed at disrupting Russia’s war in Ukraine after holding the 25th Franco-German Council of Ministers, with US President Donald Trump’s diplomatic push yet to bring the three-and-a-half-year war to an end.
The leaders of Europe’s two biggest economies on Friday agreed to accelerate measures targeting Russia’s war machine, including “companies from third countries that support Russia’s war”, according to a joint statement after the meeting in the southern French port city of Toulon.
Both countries also agreed to send additional air defence hardware to Ukraine, a day after the deadliest Russian attack on Kyiv in months, and to open a strategic dialogue about nuclear deterrence. Russian missiles and drones ripped through apartment blocks in Kyiv on Thursday, killing at least 23 people, including four children and wounding approximately 50 others.
The moves came as diplomatic efforts to end the conflict sparked by Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of its neighbour appear to have lost steam after Trump moved to restore dialogue with Moscow at the start of his second presidency.
Macron expressed hope that a long-awaited meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy would eventually take place, as Putin committed to do in conversations with Trump earlier this month.
But he added that if the Russian leader did not meet a Monday deadline to agree to the talks, “It will show again President Putin has played President Trump.”
Merz added that it looked like Putin was “unwilling” to hold such a meeting and said that the war looked like it would last “many more months”.
He promised that “we will not abandon Ukraine” but said it looked like Putin was showing “no readiness” to meet Zelenskyy.
“To be frank, that does not surprise me as this is part of this Russian president’s strategy,” Merz said.
‘Ogre at our gates’
France’s Macron showed no regret for describing Putin in an interview last week as an “ogre at our gates”, in comments that angered Moscow.
“We say there is an ogre at the gates of Europe … this is very much what the Georgians [after a 2008 invasion] and Ukrainians and many other nations feel very deeply,” he said.
“That is a man who has decided to go down an authoritarian path and impose imperialism to change international frontiers.”
Macron also warned that Putin had a habit of saying one thing at international talks and then acting differently.
“The gap between President Putin’s positions at international summits and the reality on the ground shows how insincere he is,” he said.
Russia said on Friday that Macron had spoken in a manner unbecoming of a head of state. Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Maria Zakharova told reporters in Moscow that Macron was constantly making strange statements that sometimes crossed the line of decency and turned into “low-grade insults”.
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