German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s phone call with the head of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, opened Pandora’s box. warned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi on Friday. He claims that such communication only undermines efforts to isolate the Russian leader. TASR informs about it according to a Reuters report.
“Maybe now there will be more talks, more phone calls. Just a lot of words. And that’s exactly what Putin wanted for a long time – it is extremely important for him to break his isolation,” Zelenskyy said in his evening speech. He confirmed that Scholz had informed him in advance of his plan to speak with Putin. Zelenskyy, according to a Reuters source from the German chancellor warned before this first phone call between the two of them since December 2022.
Scholz, according to a German government spokesman condemned “Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine” and the Russian president called on her he ended and withdrew his troops. He emphasized that Russia must be willing to negotiate with Ukraine in order to achieve just and lasting peace. He also confirmed Germany’s determination to support Ukraine in its “defense against Russian aggression until necessary”.
Putin in a phone call again he insisted on his territorial demands and in connection with possible agreements on ending the war in Ukraine stated that it should be taken into account security interests of Russia and eliminate the root causes of the conflict. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov subsequently added that Scholz’s position on the issue of Ukraine is well known because, according to him, “repeated several times a day by European politicians as a mantra”.
In its statement, the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs criticized the phone call with the Russian president as “concession attempt”, which Moscow considers a sign of weakness. “They only give Putin interviews the hope of easing its international isolation. What is needed are concrete, decisive steps that will force him to peace, not persuasion and attempts at concessions, which he considers a sign of weakness and uses them to his advantage,” the ministry in Kyiv said.
