Macron’s Paris conference aims to show the west has means to defeat Putin

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, is hosting a short-notice conference in Paris designed to show that Europe and the US have the political resolve and the military means to defeat Vladimir Putin in Ukraine.

Monday’s conference – to be attended by 20 European leaders including the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and the British foreign secretary, David Cameron – has, however, left some western powers questioning the value of another gathering unless Macron has specific proposals to boost ammunition production across Europe.

Ukrainian troops on Monday pulled out of a village close to Avdiivka, which was captured by Russian forces this month, as Ukraine has said a lack of ammunition is hindering its ability to fight.

The US and Canada will be represented at the Paris meeting by relatively low-level officials.

Western powers at the UN security council on Friday, and in a weekend statement from the G7 leading industrialised nations on the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion, sent out clear messages of solidarity with Ukraine.

Macron did not attend either the Munich security conference eight days ago, a major gathering of western political and military figures, or join the G7 chair, the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, on a G7 video call from Kyiv.

Macron’s aides said they felt the Munich conference engendered an excessive atmosphere of gloom about the prospects of Ukraine being able to defeat Putin or force him to negotiate.

Macron is a strong supporter of greater European autonomy and would like to see European powers, including the UK, think more strategically about how to help Ukraine in the event Donald Trump is elected US president and pulls out of Nato or ends military support to Ukraine.

More Atlanticist, leaders such as Meloni, Scholz and Cameron, recognise Europe has to prove to Republican voters that it is pulling its weight in Ukraine, but do not want to plan on the basis that the US will desert Europe, arguing that even with Trump in power it will be possible to keep the transatlantic alliance alive.

The Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, widely supported as the next Nato secretary general, will attend the Paris conference.

French officials insist there is no scenario in which Putin wins and the west does not lose.

One difficulty is that there is no single body responsible for coordinating Ukraine’s request for weapons, and that the meetings in Ramstein, Germany, attended by Ukraine’s backers, are not serviced by a single secretariat.

Officials acknowledge there needs to be a qualitative increase in the speed with which military ammunition reaches Ukraine, and in the short term want to identify factories that could boost production, as well as in the medium term send out a clear message to the European defence industry that guaranteed orders will be placed for the foreseeable future.

The European Union failed to meet its target of sending Ukraine a million rounds of artillery shells by March, and different countries have various schemes to purchase ammunition.

The Estonian prime minister, Kaja Kallas, has proposed issuing €100bn (£86bn) in Eurobonds to kickstart Europe’s defence industry, an idea she has promoted for nearly a year and that has gained the support of Macron.

Mutualised debt is opposed by Germany and the Netherlands. The Czech Republic has been promoting the purchase of ammunition from third countries.

One official said roughly 10% of each country’s defence budget needed to be devoted to Ukraine for Kyiv to win, but that figure would rise closer to 20% if there was no further US military aid.

“We want to send Putin a very clear message that he won’t win in Ukraine,” one of Macron’s advisers told reporters in a briefing. “Our goal is to crush this idea he wants us to believe that he would be somehow winning.”

French officials have said they were not expecting new military orders at the Paris meeting. France, Germany and Italy have recently signed bilateral arms support for Ukraine.

Aid commitments by EU countries and institutions amount to almost $150bn (£118bn), more than twice the amount pledged by the US, according to the Keil Institute for the World Economy, a research organisation specialising in estimating western contributions to the Ukraine war effort.

Some of those advising the Ukrainian government said there remained a fundamental mismatch between the US and Europe over whether Ukraine should eventually be required to negotiate with Russia, with Washington still convinced a deal can be struck.