Evening Briefing Europe

Europeans Are in ‘New Phase of Open Conflict,’ Merz Tells Allies

Get caught up. 

Friedrich Merz, Germany's chancellor, at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, on Friday, Feb. 13.

Photographer: Alex Kraus/Bloomberg

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz got straight to the point in Munich today, telling an audience gathered for the annual security conference that we’ve entered a “new phase of open conflict.”

Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has brought “more deep-reaching changes in the world than even we in this room thought possible,” Merz said.