(27 Mar 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Paris, France – 27 March 2025
1. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz arriving
2. SOUNDBITE (German) Olaf Scholz, German Chancellor:
"We have seen how the negotiations have gone so far, and that Russia has always come up with something new afterward – from which we can clearly take it that Russia currently is not interested in a real peace. The more important it is that we insist on a ceasefire, the possibility of a ceasefire and with it a stop of attacks to the infrastructure to provide better possibilities for a future for Ukraine especially for a fair and appropriate peace."
3. Scholz
4. SOUNDBITE (German) Olaf Scholz, German Chancellor:
"For us important is that at this time, stopping sanctions would be a serious mistake. The sanctions must be continued, they will also have to be developed further, and Europe and the U.S. must together hold a clear position to further support Ukraine. It makes no sense at all to end the sanctions as long as peace hasn’t actually been reached, and we are unfortunately a distance away from that."
5. Scholz leaving
STORYLINE:
Stopping sanctions on Russia now ‘would be a serious mistake,’ German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said.
After a "Coalition of Willing" meeting in Paris, Scholz called for the sanctions to be "developed further” and for Europe and the U.S. to "hold a clear position.”
The summit hosting the leaders of nearly 30 countries plus NATO and European Union chiefs comes at a crucial juncture in the more than three-year war, with intensifying diplomatic efforts to broker ceasefires, driven by pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to end the fighting.
But the conflict is raging on.
Before the leaders met in the luxury of the French presidential palace, Russian drone attacks overnight wounded more than 20 people and heavy shelling Thursday afternoon killed one person and knocked out electricity in parts of Kherson, Ukrainian officials said.
U.S.-brokered agreements this week to safeguard shipping in the Black Sea and last week to halt long-range strikes on energy infrastructure were greeted as a first step toward peace.
But Ukraine and Russia have disagreed over the details and accused each other of deal violations, foreshadowing a long and contentious process ahead.
There has been a growing chorus of opposition in Europe to lifting the sanctions, which remain their main leverage against Moscow.
“It makes no sense at all to end the sanctions as long as peace hasn’t actually been reached, and we are unfortunately a distance away from that,” Scholz said.
“We have seen how the (ceasefire) negotiations have gone so far, and that Russia has always come up with something new afterward – from which we can clearly take it that Russia currently is not interested in a real peace.”
He said that U.S. security guarantees for Ukraine would be “really central.”
AP video by Alex Turnbull
AP Production: Kerstin Sopke
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