According to information from Kiev, France wants to send military trainers to Ukraine.
Ukraine's military Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Monday that he welcomed "France's initiative to send instructors to Ukraine to train Ukrainian army personnel."
In a Facebook post, Syrskyi added that he had already signed documents "allowing the first French instructors to visit our training centres soon and familiarize themselves with their infrastructure and personnel."
There was initially no official confirmation from France that such a training mission was actually planned.
When asked by dpa, the Ministry of Defence in Paris merely stated: "As already mentioned several times, training on Ukrainian soil is one of the areas under discussion." It went on to say: "Like all the topics discussed on this occasion, this issue will continue to be discussed with the Ukrainian side, in particular to understand their precise needs."
Earlier on Monday, NATO called on its member states to authorize Ukraine to use Western weapons against military targets in Russia.
During a spring session in the Bulgarian capital Sofia, NATO's Parliamentary Assembly (PA) adopted a corresponding declaration vowing support of Ukraine until victory is achieved.
"The time has come to consider whether it will be right to lift some of the restrictions which have been imposed," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said.
"Because we see now that especially in the Kharkiv region, the front line and the borderline is more or less the same."
Ukraine would be weaker if NATO members continued to support it only halfway, warned the president of the PA, Michał Szczerba from Poland.
Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov appealed in a video message for the allies to close the airspace over western Ukraine with their air-defence systems.
Umerov reiterated that his country was striving for full NATO membership.
Parliamentarians from NATO member countries and partner states took part in the PA spring meeting. A delegation from the German Bundestag also travelled to Sofia.
Stoltenberg named three topics for the upcoming NATO summit in Washington in July: improving the defence capabilities of member states, support for Ukraine and global partnerships with a focus on the Asia-Pacific region.
The PA also called for the creation of a centre at NATO headquarters in Brussels to combat disinformation.
Meanwhile, the German government remained opposed to the idea of setting up a defensive shield from NATO territory, a top spokesman said.
"From our point of view, that would be an involvement, a direct involvement in this conflict. And that is something we are not aiming for," government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said in Berlin.
There have been calls from some recently for NATO powers to bolster Ukrainian air defences by establishing some sort of protective shield over Ukraine.
Hebestreit did not want to comment specifically on a question as to whether and in what form Ukraine had given assurances that it would not carry out attacks on targets in Russia with the weapons systems supplied from Germany.
These regulations were subject to confidentiality and had proved their worth, Hebestreit said. He also noted that international law stipulates that a state under attack can also defend itself outside its own borders.
