Scholz will next week host French President Emmanuel Macron for talks on Ukraine ahead of an EU summit, the German government said
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Saturday called on Russia to finally work toward a just peace in Ukraine after three years of war.
“It is now up to Russia to put an end to its daily attacks against Ukrainian cities and civil infrastructure and to finally take the way of a lasting and just peace,” Scholz said in a statement after participating in a virtual summit hosted by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Scholz will next week host French President Emmanuel Macron for talks on Ukraine ahead of an EU summit, the German government said Friday. The talks on Tuesday come as the Europeans scramble to come up with a united position after a US policy shift on the three-year conflict under President Donald Trump.
“European political topics will naturally form the focus of the discussion” between the two leaders “but certainly the distressing international issues affecting us all will also play a role, particularly the developments in Ukraine”, government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit told a press conference in Berlin. The meeting will serve as preparation for a European Union summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday, he added.
Scholz is set to relinquish power soon, after his centre-left SPD party was defeated in elections last month. His likely successor, conservative leader Friedrich Merz, hopes to dramatically ramp up defence spending in the face of Russian hostility and worries about the US commitment to Europe.
EU leaders have rallied around Ukraine since Trump began piling pressure on Kyiv to swiftly strike a deal to end the war and made overtures to Russia.
Kyiv this week agreed to a US-proposed plan for a ceasefire. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he has “serious questions” about the plan but was ready to discuss it with Trump.
Meanwhile, Russia and Ukraine continued aerial attacks on each other, inflicting injuries and damages, officials said early on Sunday, as the fate of a proposed ceasefire to the three-year-old war remained uncertain.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday he supported in principle Washington’s proposal for a 30-day ceasefire with Ukraine but that his forces would fight on until several crucial conditions were worked out.
Both sides have since traded heavy aerial strikes, and Russia moved closer on battlefield to ejecting Ukrainian forces from their months-old foothold in the western Russian region of Kursk.
The Russian defense ministry said on Sunday that its air defense units destroyed a total of 31 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory.
Of those, 16 were downed over the southwestern region of Voronezh, nine over the territory of the Belgorod region and the rest over the Rostov and Kursk regions, the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app.
In a Ukrainian drone attack on the Russian border region of Belgorod, three people were injured, including a 7-year-old, regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said earlier on the Telegram messaging app.
Two of the people were injured after a drone hit their house, sparking a fire in the Gubkinsky district of the region, while the other person was injured in a drone attack on the village of Dolgoye, Gladkov said.
Alexander Gusev, governor of Voronezh, said on Telegram that there was no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
The acting governor of the southern Russian region of Rostov said there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage reported there either.
In Ukraine, authorities reported several Russian drone strikes, including on the northern region of Chernihiv, where firefighters were battling a blaze at a high-rise building that was sparked by Russian drone attack, Ukraine’s state of emergency service said.
Ukrainian media reported a series of explosions in the region surrounding the capital Kyiv, after Ukraine’s air force issued warnings of a threat of drone attacks on Kyiv and a number of other central Ukrainian regions. By 0300 GMT on Sunday, there was no official information about damage in the Kyiv region.
