German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time since December 2022 yesterday afternoon urging him to start "serious" talks with Ukraine.
In the phone call, Scholz urged Putin to end the war of aggression against Ukraine and withdraw his troops, German government sources stated.
Russia should “enter into serious negotiations with Ukraine with the aim of achieving a just and lasting peace for Ukraine,” Scholz was reported to have said, stressing that Russia had not achieved its war goals.
Scholz also stressed Germany’s commitment to supporting Ukraine as long as necessary, government sources added. The involvement of North Korean troops is seen as a “serious escalation and expansion of the conflict.”
Putin, for his part, underlined that any agreement to resolve the conflict would have to "take into account the security interests of the Russian Federation, proceed from the new territorial realities and, most importantly, eliminate the root causes of the conflict," Russian news agency TASS reported.
He reiterated that, in his view, “the current crisis was a direct result of NATO's multi-year aggressive policy.”
German media had reported in October that Scholz was considering a phone call with Putin ahead of next week’s G20 summit in Brazil.
However, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had responded to the reports by saying that he did not see any relevant topics to discuss, according to Russian news agencies, adding that relations had reached “absolute zero.”
In recent months, Scholz has repeatedly stressed his desire to bring Russia to the negotiating table. He had stated his goal of holding a peace summit with Russia following the June peace summit in Switzerland, at which Russian representatives were absent.
The phone call marked a notable development, as it was the first call between the two leaders in nearly two years and one of the first of any major European leader in a long time. French President Emmanuel Macron had also last spoken to Putin in 2022. When contacted by Euractiv, the Elysée Palace declined to comment.
On Sunday, the Scholz will travel to Brazil, where Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is expected to be present.
No doubt neither man will be aware the phone call took place of the feast day of the famous Dominican theologian and philosopher, St Albert the Great.
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