German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Friday he was ready to resume contact “at the right time” with Russian President Vladimir Putin over Ukraine.
“It’s been some time since my last phone conversation. But when the time comes, I intend to talk to Putin again,” Scholz said in an interview published by the Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger newspaper.
Regarding the resolution of the conflict, “Russia must understand that it is not about sealing a kind of cold peace, which would make the current front become the new border between Russia and Ukraine, since this would only legitimize the criminal expedition of Putin, insisted Olaf Scholz.
“On the contrary, an equitable peace must be achieved and the condition for this is the withdrawal of Russian troops” from Ukraine, after the invasion that began in February 2022, he added.
However, the German chancellor declined to say whether this withdrawal should also include Crimea, occupied since 2014, as he believes it is up to Ukraine to define exactly what it wants.
Olaf Scholz and Vladimir Putin last spoke on the phone for an hour in December 2022.
At that time, the head of the German government urged the Russian head of state to withdraw troops from Ukraine, without success, while Vladimir Putin accused the West of following “destructive policies”.
Since then, bilateral relations have been at their lowest ebb. The war in Ukraine forced Germany into a diplomatic and economic turnaround after decades of closer ties with Russia.
Before the invasion of Ukraine, Moscow was Germany’s main supplier of oil and gas.
After the invasion of Ukraine, Germany also decided to invest massively in the armed forces, breaking a long tradition of pacifism in the country after World War II.
Source: TSF
