Cancellation of the Ukraine summit
Zelenskyj comes to Berlin instead of Biden
Updated on October 9, 2024 – 5:50 p.mReading time: 3 min.
The major Ukraine solidarity summit in Ramstein is canceled due to US President Biden’s cancellation. A very important one of the invited heads of state is still coming to Germany.
Despite the postponement of the major Ukraine solidarity summit in Ramstein, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj is coming to Germany. According to information from the German Press Agency, he will meet Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Berlin on Friday.
It will be Zelenskyj’s second visit to Germany within five weeks and the third personal conversation with Scholz during this period. At the beginning of September, the Ukrainian president took part in a defense ministerial meeting of the allies in Ramstein and met Scholz in Frankfurt am Main. Just three weeks later, the two met again shortly before the UN General Assembly in New York for a conversation.
Before Zelensky’s visit to Berlin became known, the US command at the air base in Ramstein announced that the summit meeting of 50 allied states of Ukraine would be postponed following US President Joe Biden’s cancellation. Zelensky had already confirmed his participation.
Biden postponed his visit to Germany on Tuesday at short notice due to Hurricane Milton, which is approaching Florida. The US command in Ramstein, Rhineland-Palatinate, then announced on Wednesday that the event on October 12th had also been postponed. “Announcements about future meetings of the Contact Group on Defense of Ukraine will follow.”
The contact group includes a total of 50 countries that support Ukraine in its defensive fight against Russia by supplying weapons and armaments. It has already met several times in Ramstein at the defense minister level. The meeting planned for Saturday would have been the first summit at the level of heads of state and government.
In addition to Biden, around 20 other heads of state and government had announced their presence. Among others, there were commitments from French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. In the meantime there was speculation as to whether the summit would still take place and the US President could join in. A meeting at the level of defense ministers was also considered.
It is now clear that such a meeting will not take place for the time being. There are currently no alternative dates for Biden’s visit or for the summit. However, a spokesman for the Federal Defense Minister said that there was a desire to hold at least one meeting at defense minister level in October.
Chancellor Scholz (SPD) had already shown understanding for Biden’s rejection on RTL on Tuesday. “If such storms raged in my country, then I would also make this decision.”
The Chancellor’s meeting with Zelensky is not without explosiveness. The Ukrainian president is demanding permission from Western allies to use long-range weapons against targets on Russian territory. Unlike the USA, Great Britain and France, Germany did not supply such weapons in the first place. Scholz does not want to provide the “Taurus” cruise missile with a range of 500 kilometers because he fears that Germany and NATO could then be drawn into the war.
Before his last meeting with Zelensky in New York, Scholz also made it clear that he did not want to further relax the rules for the use of other German weapons in the Ukrainian defense against Russia. With regard to military support for Ukraine, the federal government has made “a few decisions that are very clear to me,” said the SPD politician. This also means that Germany will not lift range restrictions. “That is not compatible with my personal stance. (…) We won’t do that. And we have good reasons for that.”
The most long-range weapon supplied by Germany is the Mars II rocket launcher, which can hit targets 84 kilometers away. For a limited area around Kharkiv, the federal government has permitted the use of this weapon or the self-propelled howitzer 2000 with a range of 56 kilometers against targets on Russian soil.
The meeting is also likely to focus on the Chancellor’s efforts to hold another peace conference, which Russian President Vladimir Putin will also take part in. Scholz has been aggressively promoting this for weeks and has not ruled out a phone call with Putin. The two last spoke to each other in December 2022.