Berlin says aid that entered Gaza this week is 'too little, too late'
BERLIN (Reuters) -The aid trucks that Israel has allowed into the Gaza Strip this week are "too little, too late," a spokesperson for the German government said on Friday.
"This is far too little, too late and too slow," the spokesperson said.
"Now it's a matter of increasing it significantly ... and ensuring that these aid supplies reach the people so that the suffering in the Gaza Strip comes to an end," he added.
(Writing by Friederike Heine; editing by Matthias Williams)
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Germany on tenterhooks for Merz's first official meeting with Trump
Germany's new conservative leader, Friedrich Merz, is due in Washington on Thursday for his first official meeting with Donald Trump, putting political Berlin on tenterhooks like no other transatlantic encounter in living memory. Discussions between the German chancellor and the US president will focus on Ukraine, the Middle East and trade policies. How well or badly the talks go – during a small group meeting, followed by a lunch and then, perhaps most nailbitingly, a press conference in the Oval Office – may shape relations for decades to come, analysts say. Long before Merz's plane was due to take off on Wednesday evening, political observers in Berlin were weighing up the most nuanced of indicators as to how the visit might play out. The fact that Merz is being put up in Blair House, the official government guesthouse – a factor that convinced his advisers he should stay the night, when he otherwise might have just slept on the plane – is being seen as a positive sign. Also, having reportedly spoken by phone four times since Merz's election win in February, swapped numbers and exchanged an undisclosed number of text messages, the two leaders are now on first-name terms – something that, culturally at least, doesn't come easy to a German. German government advisers say it bodes well that they have dropped 'Mr President' and 'Chancellor' in favour of Donald and Friedrich. But Merz knows the road to a normal friendship is thorny. The transatlantic relationship has been altered almost beyond recognition since Trump's return to office, and the shock 'sits very deep', said Mariam Lau, a journalist and the author of a new in-depth portrayal of Merz. 'It's the equivalent of a medical emergency in political terms: the speed and degree to which the Merz government has had to react to the disintegration of the transatlantic alliance, one of its main foreign policy pillars, is like being forced to undergo dialysis or an organ transplantation,' Lau said. Related: Friedrich Merz calls for US to 'stay out' of German politics Berlin has viewed as menacing and dangerous the unprecedented interference in German politics by leading members of the Trump administration – by his former adviser Elon Musk; the secretary of state, Marco Rubio; and the vice-president, JD Vance, in particular. There is the lack of unity over how and even whether to punish Vladimir Putin over his invasion of Ukraine, there are tensions over defence spending levels, and there are diverging viewpoints over the Middle East, and over Trump's looming tariffs. Lau said Merz would have to 'walk a tightrope between keeping an open dialogue with Trump and standing up to him, not giving into his whims'. She said his immediate concern would be that the US did not back out of supporting Ukraine. The German leader's first proper taste of conversing with Trump came shortly after Merz entered office last month. He told an audience in Berlin that during a half-hour phone conversation the two spoke, among other things, about places and people in the US with which they were mutually acquainted, Merz from his time when he took a break from politics and worked there as a commercial lawyer. 'Every second or third word was 'great',' Merz recalled. He made sure to congratulate Trump on the election of the new North American pope. Several people on both sides have stressed the 'positive tone', the importance of which Lau said was not to be underestimated, 'because the tone is the politics'. But nobody in Berlin is resting on their laurels. As to just how quickly leaders' inaugural visits to the Oval Office can curdle, one only needs to recall Volodymyr Zelenskyy's lions' den encounter three months ago, or more recently the South African president Cyril Ramaphosa's. It has not gone unnoticed that Merz called the latter last Friday, reportedly to pick up a few Trump-whisperer tips. 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'Though, keeping it short for Trump, he may just round it up to 5%,' said the Frankfurter Allgemeine's political correspondent Matthias Wyssuwa. Getting the grounding right on this will be seen as crucial by Germany's allies before the G7 summit in Canada in mid-June and, a week later, the Nato summit in The Hague, both of which Trump is expected to attend. Merz will also stress his government's tightened immigration policy, recalling how Trump criticised Angela Merkel on this topic during his first term of office in 2017. When it comes to tariffs, in particular a punishing 50% on aluminium and steel introduced the day before his arrival, Merz has already prepped – and used – the firm sentence that the US should remember it is dealing with a marketplace of 500 million consumers when it does business with the EU's 27 members. Merz knows that keeping things brief, not interrupting, heaping praise and stressing the commonalities is the accepted playbook when dealing with Trump. The subject of Trump's German roots might also help. It was apparently the US president who brought it up when they spoke – even though until well into the 1980s Trump had been apparently keen to hide the fact. Trump's grandfather Friedrich changed his name to Frederick upon emigrating to the US in 1869. Merz has already discussed with Trump the idea of bringing him on a heritage tour of his old heimat, Kallstadt, a village in the rural wine region of south-west Germany famous for its grape juice and speciality pig's stomach (there has been speculation this might be what he ends up giving the teetotal president as a gift). However, it would require treading carefully with the locals who, anecdotally at least, seem far from enthusiastic about hosting him, far less erecting a statue of their most famous son as some have suggested. Usefully, Merz knows the region, having completed his military service there in the 1970s. One subject he may choose to avoid, though, is the fact that Trump's grandfather was in effect kicked out, deported as punishment for having skipped the mandatory military service of the day.
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Trump scorns Merkel legacy during new German chancellor's White House visit
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Trump says it may be better to let Ukraine and Russia ‘fight for a while'
Donald Trump has said it may be better to let Ukraine and Russia 'fight for a while' rather than pursue peace immediately, as the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, urged him to increase pressure on Russia. During the Oval Office meeting, Trump voiced doubts about the potential success of peace talks, saying 'sometimes you're better off letting them fight for a while and then pulling them apart'. The US president said he had told Vladimir Putin that the two countries were like 'two young children fighting like crazy in a park' when the two spoke by phone on Wednesday. Putin's reaction is not known, but the Russian leader would probably welcome the US agreeing to his previous calls for Washington to stay out of the conflict and stop providing military aid and support to Ukraine. Merz, who used his speaking time in the Oval Office to press the US president on Ukraine, told Trump that he wanted to work together to put more pressure on Russia and reminded Trump that the violence he abhorred seeing was a result of Putin's invasion of Ukraine. He told Trump that the German people owed the US gratitude for its role in defeating Nazi Germany in the second world war. 'America is again in a very strong position to do something on ending this war [in Ukraine], so let's talk about doing what we can,' he said. 'We are looking for more pressure on Russia, we should talk about that.' Related: The Guardian view on Ukraine's spectacular attack: 21st-century tactics still require support from allies | Editorial Russia has vowed to respond to Ukraine's daring drone operation 'how and when' it sees fit, the Kremlin warned, seeming to confirm reports that Putin had told Trump that Moscow was obliged to retaliate. Ukraine has been bracing for retaliation after its SBU security service carried out a surprise drone strike over the weekend, targeting four airbases and damaging up to 20 Russian warplanes deep inside the country, according to US officials. The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, asked on Thursday what Moscow's response would be, said: 'How and when our military deems it appropriate.' Trump said Putin had 'strongly' told him that Russia would respond to the recent attacks on its airfields, during an unannounced phone call on Wednesday. The US embassy in Ukraine warned of a continuing risk of 'significant airstrikes' and advised its citizens to exercise caution. Hours after Trump and Putin spoke, Russia launched a series of missiles and drones across Ukraine overnight. At least five people, including a one-year-old boy, his mother and grandmother, were killed when a drone struck a residential building in the northern Ukrainian city of Pryluky. The child was the grandson of an emergency responder, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said. 'One of the rescuers arrived to respond to the aftermath right at his own home,' Zelenskyy said in a post on Telegram. 'It turned out that a Shahed drone hit his house.' In the southern city of Kherson, a large hole was seen in an administration building after missile attacks by the Russian army. But Russian officials have suggested that Moscow has yet to respond to Ukraine's weekend drone attack, which came a day before two bridges collapsed, killing seven people – attacks Moscow blamed on Ukrainian sabotage. After Ukraine carried out its unorthodox operation using drones smuggled into Russia on trucks, pro-Kremlin war bloggers and prominent commentators posted on Russian media to demand retribution, with some calling for nuclear retaliation. While Russian officials have previously indicated their willingness to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, analysts consider the deployment of such weapons on the battlefield highly unlikely at this stage of the war. Russia's nuclear doctrine permits the use of nuclear weapons in response to attacks that pose a 'critical threat' to the country's sovereignty. In a podcast for the independent outlet Meduza, Pavel Podvig, a Geneva-based expert on Russian nuclear forces, rejected suggestions that Ukraine's recent drone strikes could justify such a response. He argued the operation did not threaten Russia's sovereignty or territorial integrity, nor did it undermine the retaliatory capacity of its strategic nuclear arsenal. A nuclear strike would also be strongly condemned by China, Russia's most influential ally, with Xi Jinping previously warning Putin against the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Instead, as in past responses to Ukrainian military successes, Moscow may launch a wave of deadly ballistic missile strikes – or deploy its experimental Oreshnik missile, which was used at least once last year. Ukraine has intensified its sabotage operations over the past week, including detonating underwater explosives beneath a key bridge linking Russia to the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014. On Wednesday, a visibly angry Putin for the first time reacted to the Ukrainian attacks, accusing Kyiv of 'organising terrorist attacks'. 'How can we have meetings like this under these conditions? What is there to talk about? Who has negotiations with … terrorists?' he said. Trump has not publicly commented on the Ukrainian drone operation, but sources who reportedly discussed it with him told Axios he described the attack as 'strong' and 'badass' and saw it as a setback to his diplomatic initiative to end the war. While the drone strikes dealt a tangible blow to Russia's military capacity and offered a morale boost for Kyiv, the broader picture remains less rosy for Ukraine. More than three years after launching its invasion, Russia is largely on the offensive, making steady battlefield gains in eastern Ukraine and continuing to pound Ukrainian cities and civilians with drones and missiles. Putin's forces have been advancing further into Ukraine's northern region of Sumy, threatening the regional capital after taking more than 150 sq km of the area in less than two weeks. With Putin showing no willingness to agree to a lasting ceasefire, Ukrainian officials and the military are preparing for a Russian summer offensive, with Moscow intent on advancing into the Sumy and Kharkiv regions.
