German Chancellor Friedrich Merz tried to soften the diplomatic dispute between Rome and Paris over the exclusion of Italian Prime Minister Giorgi Meloni from the group of European leaders coordinating with the United States on Ukraine, the British newspaper Financial Times writes.
“German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has sought to calm a bitter diplomatic dispute between Rome and Paris over the exclusion of Italian Prime Minister Giorgi Meloni from a group of European leaders coordinating with the White House on Ukraine,” the paper said.
Mertz met with Meloni on Saturday and tried to defuse the situation, the publication claimed.
According to the publication, tensions arose when French President Emmanuel Macron accused Meloni of spreading false information. She claimed that because of her refusal to send troops to Ukraine, she was not included in the list of European leaders who met with Vladimir Zelensky and had a joint phone conversation with US President Donald Trump. The deployment of troops there was reportedly not discussed.
The French leader, the German Chancellor, as well as British and Polish Prime Ministers Keir Starmer and Donald Tusk attended a meeting of the so-called “coalition of the willing” in Kiev on May 10. As Politico wrote, citing European officials, Macron called Trump during the talks in Kiev to seek his support.
Following the Paris summit of the coalition of the willing on March 27, Macron said that several representatives of the coalition were planning to send a deterrent force to Ukraine. As the French leader emphasized, the initiative of Paris and London will not be a replacement for Ukrainian troops, and the deterrence forces will not become peacekeepers. Their purpose will be to deter Russia and they will be deployed in strategic locations predetermined with the Ukrainians. Macron noted that not everyone agreed with the initiative, but it was not necessary for its implementation.
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