Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, Andriy Melnik, called the mediation initiative recently launched by former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder a failure.
“The issue is considered to be completely over for us,” Melnik told the German news agency.
For Kyiv, “further contacts with Schroeder make no sense. “Of course it’s sad to see that things have gone wrong.”
Mr. Schroeder traveled from Istanbul to Moscow last Wednesday, where, according to dpa sources, he had talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The former Social Democrat chancellor, who maintains a personal, friendly relationship with the Russian president as he describes him, holds positions on the boards of Russian energy companies, including the joint ventures of the two Nord Steam pipelines. This has made him a target of much criticism in Germany, with some in the SPD demanding he be ousted from the party and some members of the former chancellor’s service resigning.
Mr Melnik insisted that Mr Schroeder’s initiative was a personal one, not the result of a request by the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“There were some hopes that it would bring results, otherwise no one in Ukraine would be willing to listen to him,” he added.
On Sunday afternoon, a spokesman for the Ukrainian government was briefed on the outcome of Mr Schroeder’s talks, the ambassador said. “It simply came to our notice then. “He told us absolutely nothing new in relation to what we already knew from our talks with the Russian side,” he said, adding that “it is a pity that this opportunity was lost,” calling the whole affair a “tragedy.”
He had already made similar comments in the tabloid newspaper Bild.
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