Russia is currently not prepared to negotiate peace with Ukraine, German Ambassador to Moscow Alexander Graf Lambsdorff said in a statement to the Bonner General-Anzeiger newspaper on Friday.
“At the moment, the Russian side is not showing any willingness to negotiate, but is only setting exaggerated conditions,” Lambsdorff said.
When Russian President Vladimir Putin says he is only willing to talk to Ukraine if the country first fully withdraws from all the territories he says have already been annexed by Russia — including those parts that Russia does not control militarily — “it is clear that there is no seriousness behind it,” said Lambsdorff, who has been ambassador to Moscow for about a year.
The work of the German embassy in Moscow is aimed at being present so that action can be taken if Moscow’s attitude changes, he added.
“Because one day Russia will also have to realize that with this war it is achieving much less than it initially intended, that it is causing itself serious damage internationally and that it is in a completely overheated war economy that is not sustainable,” the ambassador said.
He added that the current advance of Ukraine in the Russian region of Kursk with ground troops has made Russia nervous. For the border guards, the secret service, the army, the civil defense force and also the population it was an unpleasant surprise that the Ukrainian troops could succeed in such an action.
Asked whether the major prisoner swap between Russia and the West in early August was a signal that Russia would take action, Lambsdorff told the newspaper that Putin was only interested in the convicted murderer who had been released from a German prison.
“His reception in Moscow made that clear once again,” Lambsdorff said.
Putin greeted convicted murderer Vadim Krasikov, who was imprisoned in Germany, with a hug in Moscow.
According to Lambsdorff, the exchange was therefore not a sign of a fundamental improvement in communications with Moscow.
In December 2021, Krasikov was convicted of the August 2019 murder of an ethnic Chechen born in Georgia in a central Berlin park in broad daylight. A German court ruled that Russia had ordered the killing.
