“The Chancellor of Germany spoke about the details of the phone call during a press conference in Kyiv”, — write: www.radiosvoboda.org
The details of the phone call were shared by the Chancellor of Germany on December 2 during a joint press conference with the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi in Kyiv, a Radio Liberty correspondent reports.
Answering the question: “how to talk about peace with a person who does not want this peace”, Scholz noted that “you can easily answer with a clear position, a clear conversation, as well as clear statements about what we will do.”
Scholz recalled a conversation he had with Putin in Moscow, even before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began.
“I communicated with the Russian president before the war, for a long time in Moscow. It was very detailed and we disagreed on many points. Especially when it comes to the general conditions that then prompted him to start the war. In my opinion, this was planned a long time ago. It was decided two years before the start of the war. It didn’t happen spontaneously three weeks or two months before, but rather something he worked on purposefully,” Scholz noted.
According to the chancellor, in a conversation with the Russian president in November of this year, he expressed his position to Putin.
“I made it very clear that Ukraine has the right to be an independent, sovereign, democratic state that has decided that it wants to be part of the European Union, and that also has a strong army, and therefore can achieve its independence. Russia must stop the war and withdraw its troops. I also told him that very clearly. You know what he answered from what was printed in the Russian press. We have different opinions here. But you still need to have a clear understanding and express it. That’s what I did,” explained the Chancellor of Germany.
He also added that he told the Russian president that Germany will not weaken its support for Ukraine and will support it as long as necessary.
President Zelenskyi said that the “diplomatic isolation” of Putin is important.
“I really believe that Putin’s isolation is sanctioned, diplomatic, etc., it strengthens Ukraine more and weakens Putin. I believe that in Europe, and not only in Europe, it can happen for various reasons that after one conversation there is a second, third, fifth conversation, because sometimes the leaders want to take the leadership to themselves. And I believe that there may just be a wave of, say, recognition of Putin in fact. I believe that this does not strengthen Ukraine. This is in my opinion, but as I said, we have much more in common with Germany than we have differences, and let us have different opinions on this issue,” said President Zelensky.
On November 15, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin. This happened for the first time since December 2022. According to the German government, Scholz “condemned Russia’s aggressive war against Ukraine and called on President Putin to stop it and withdraw the troops.”
The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said that the telephone conversation between Sholtz and Putin is “Pandora’s box.”
Subsequently, the German chancellor admitted that his conversation with Vladimir Putin on November 15 did not show a change in the Russian leader’s views on the war against Ukraine. At the same time, he said it was worth talking to Putin to dispel any illusions he may have had that the West was allegedly going to withdraw its support for Ukraine.