Enlarge image

Olaf Scholz (SPD): “To put it bluntly: As German Chancellor, I will not send any soldiers to Ukraine.”

Photo: Markus Schreiber / AP

Against the backdrop of massive German-French differences in Ukraine policy, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) will meet with French President Emmanuel Macron and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Berlin on Friday.

A corresponding report from the news portal “Politico” was confirmed in government circles.

It is the first meeting of the so-called Weimar Triangle at the top level since June last year.

The conversation takes place almost three weeks after the memorable Ukraine conference, to which Macron invited around 20 heads of state and government to Paris.

It resulted in a scandal.

At the subsequent press conference, the French President did not rule out sending ground troops, which Scholz publicly contradicted several times in the following days.

"To make it clear: As German Chancellor, I will not send any soldiers from our Bundeswehr to Ukraine," he said.

Tusk has also made it clear that he does not intend to send ground troops to Ukraine.

However, his Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski expressed himself positively about Macron's initiative: "The presence of NATO troops in Ukraine is not unthinkable.

“I welcome the initiative of French President Emmanuel Macron,” he wrote on the X platform on Friday.

Meeting after government formation in Poland

The “Weimar Triangle” discussion format was founded in August 1991 in Weimar, Thuringia, by the then Foreign Ministers Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Roland Dumas and Krzysztof Skubiszewski.

It initially served primarily to bring Poland and other Eastern European states closer to the European Union and NATO.

In the meantime, the triangle became significantly less important.

After the formation of the new government in Poland, there had so far only been one meeting in the “Weimar Triangle” at foreign minister level.

However, all three EU governments had confirmed that they wanted to intensify relations between the three countries again.

til/dpa/Reuters