Donald Tusk arrived in Berlin with a message: it's time to get serious about helping Ukraine.
The meeting is taking place in the "Weimar Triangle" format in the German capital. "True solidarity with Ukraine? Less words, more ammunition," Tusk wrote on social media on the eve of the summit.
Today, official Berlin is increasingly shying away from military support for Ukraine.
Yesterday, March 14, the Bundestag failed in a vote to transfer long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine, explaining its decision by saying that Germany does not want to go to war with Russia. On the same day, the leader of the ruling SPD faction in the Bundestag, Rolf Mützenich, said that Germany should think about "how to freeze the war in Ukraine and then put an end to it". He also praised Scholz for his principled stance not to hand over Germany's long-range Taurus missiles, while Britain and France have already sent their similar missiles Storm Shadow and SCALP to Kyiv.
The French leadership, on the contrary, is taking a more radical course toward the Kremlin.
French President Emmanuel Macron has been increasingly aggressive in his rhetoric, amplifying comments about the prospect of sending Western ground troops to Ukraine and saying that Europe should not act like "cowards" in the face of Russian aggression.
Amid strong differences in the two powers' positions, there is now a serious political confrontation between Paris and Berlin.
Last month, France and Germany signed security agreements with Ukraine, promising to help fight a Russian invasion "for as long as necessary" and to assist Kyiv in building modern defense capabilities.
