German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD, right) and Russian President Vladimir Putin looked up after hours of one-on-one talks at a joint news conference. Xiaoz met with the Russian President to hold talks on the situation on the Ukrainian-Russian border.
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German Chancellor Olaf Scholz urged Russian President Vladimir Putin in a rare phone call on Friday to start talks with Ukraine that would open the way to a “just and lasting peace.”
A German government spokesman said that in their first phone conversation in nearly two years, Scholz also demanded that Russia withdraw its troops from Ukraine and reiterated that Germany would continue to support Ukraine.
The call comes as Ukraine faces increasingly difficult battlefield conditions amid shortages of weapons and personnel while Russian forces advance steadily.
“The prime minister urges Russia to show its willingness to negotiate with Ukraine to achieve a just and lasting peace,” the spokesman said in a statement.
“He stressed that Germany unswervingly supports Ukraine in resisting Russian aggression for as long as necessary,” the spokesman added.
The spokesman said that Scholz spoke with Ukrainian President Zelensky before his phone call with Putin, and would then inform the Ukrainian leader of the outcome of the call.
Germany is Ukraine’s biggest financial backer and biggest arms supplier after the United States, and its future support for Kiev appears uncertain after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election.
Trump has repeatedly criticized the scale of Western financial and military aid to Ukraine and suggested he could end the war quickly, without explaining how.
Scholz and Putin last spoke on the phone in December 2022, 10 months after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and plunged Russia’s relations with the West into their deepest freeze since the Cold War.
Schulz, the most unpopular German chancellor ever, is preparing for a national election on February 23, where his Social Democratic Party will face stiff competition from left-wing and far-right parties opposed to Germany’s attack on Ukraine. Support a critical attitude.
