Germany rebuffs Emmanuel Macron on troops in Ukraine and tells Paris to ‘supply more weapons’

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Germany’s deputy chancellor said there was “no chance” of sending ground troops to Ukraine and, in a rebuff to France, told Paris it should instead supply Kyiv with more weapons.

Robert Habeck rejected French President Emmanuel Macron’s suggestion that a troop deployment to Ukraine should not be ruled out, as Nato leaders also rounded on the idea.

“I’m pleased that France is thinking about how to increase its support for Ukraine, but if I could give it a word of advice — supply more weapons,” Habeck said on Tuesday.

The Franco-German spat came as western powers hunt for ways to increase support for Kyiv, which is running short of ammunition, while avoiding a wider escalation in the war with Russia.

Moscow warned on Tuesday that deploying troops would make a full-scale war against Nato inevitable.

Asked whether German troops could be sent to Ukraine, Habeck said “there is no chance of that” and called on France to “do what you can now and give Ukraine the munitions and the tanks that can be supplied now”.

Macron made his suggestion at a meeting of European leaders in Paris on Monday where he said the option of sending western troops to Ukraine had been discussed.

While acknowledging that the summit had not reached consensus “for sending in ground troops, in an official and declared way”, the French president added: “Nothing should be excluded. We will do whatever it takes to ensure that Russia cannot win this war.”

But German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said western powers had agreed “that there would be no ground troops on Ukrainian soil, no soldiers sent there from European states or Nato states”, comments that were echoed by his counterparts in Poland, Italy and the Czech Republic.

Germany is by far Europe’s biggest provider of military support to Ukraine and has long been critical of France’s more modest contribution, despite the two countries’ similar-sized defence budgets.

France said it did not keep large stockpiles of old weapons that it could offload to Ukraine and has instead supplied more sophisticated arms, notably its Scalp cruise missile.

A Nato official said there were no plans for the alliance to put combat troops on the ground: “Ukraine has the right to self-defence, and we have the right to support them.”

But a senior European defence official said Macron’s statement was about creating deterrence and ambiguity towards Russia, adding: “Everyone knows there are western special forces in Ukraine — they’ve just not acknowledged it officially.”

French officials maintained that Macron was not suggesting western troops should be sent en masse to the front lines, but that it was no longer a taboo to rule out involvement.

They also said western troops could potentially be involved through limited missions such as demining, maintaining and repairing weapons systems, or helping to secure the borders of other countries threatened by Russia, such as Moldova.

A voice of support for Macron came from Lithuania, where an adviser to the country’s president said the government was “openly” discussing whether to send troops to help train soldiers in Ukraine.

Lithuanian foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis added: “Times like these require political leadership, ambition and courage to think out of the box. The initiative behind the Paris meeting yesterday is well worth considering.”

But Dmitry Peskov, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, told reporters that if Nato sent troops to fight in Ukraine, war with the alliance “wouldn’t be likely, but inevitable”.

Worries about the risks of escalation with Russia are at the heart of a domestic dispute in Germany over whether to send long-range precision Taurus missiles to Ukraine.

Ukraine has said it urgently needs long-range weapons to try to degrade Russia’s military logistics and buy urgently needed time.

But Scholz said on Monday that his country might find itself “a participant in the war” if it sent the Taurus missiles. He added: “German soldiers must at no point and in no place be linked to targets this system reaches” — either in Ukraine or Germany itself.

In a thinly veiled barb at Berlin on Monday night, Macron said some allies kept saying “never” to tanks, fighter jets and long-range missiles for Ukraine and had merely offered to send “sleeping bags and helmets” at the onset of the full-blown war two years ago.

“Today, [we all realise that] we have to do more, faster and harder, to send missiles and tanks,” the French president said.

Additional reporting by Sam Jones in Berlin, Leila Abboud in Paris, Max Seddon in Riga and John Paul Rathbone in London