Scholz and Macron meet in Berlin to mend Ukraine rift

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will receive French President Emmanuel Macron in Berlin on Friday after tensions between the leaders blew out into the open over differences on how to support Ukraine.

After a clear-the-air meeting in the chancellery, the pair will be joined by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk for urgent consultations on further European military backing for Kiev.

Ukraine has faced a series of battlefield setbacks in repelling Russian troops, as its forces have faced critical shortages of ammunition and aid from Western allies has stuttered.

A massive U.S. aid package of $60 billion (55 billion euros) remains blocked in Congress by right-wing Republicans, and President Joe Biden has acknowledged that $300 million of stopgap support announced Tuesday was "not nearly enough".

It falls to Paris, Berlin and Warsaw "to mobilise all of Europe" to provide Ukraine with fresh aid, Tusk said.

But simmering disagreements between Macron and Scholz threatened to undermine cooperation between the allies.

Debates between France and Germany "may have culminated in what we have seen in the last weeks, but there have been difficulties for quite a long time now", said Nico Lange, an analyst for the Munich Security Conference (MSC).

 'Calculated effort' 

The summit of the so-called Weimar Triangle of European powers in Berlin was a "good sign that finally... the errors are corrected to some extent", Lange said.

Germany's European partners have been frustrated by Scholz's refusal to provide its long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine, despite urgent calls from Kiev.

The chancellor, on the other hand, reacted angrily to Macron's refusal to rule out sending troops to Ukraine and his...