Germany: Politicians Ask Scholz to Continue Talks with Putin

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is expected to “hold further telephone talks” with Russian President Vladimir Putin after the one held last November. This was stated by Saskia Esken (pictured), co-chair of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), who said: “We need to have these conversations again and again to explore what can be done to finally make the killing stop.”

Esken emphasized that Chancellor Scholz is in contact with the leaders of India and Brazil, two countries that have close relations with Moscow and are working on some important peace initiatives: “War is not decided on the battlefield, but through negotiation. And for that, there have to be channels of communication to know who you can count on,” Esken emphasized in the end.

Esken’s statements came a day after Russian gas supplies to European countries were cut off – by Ukraine’s decision. Russia holds the USA and Ukraine responsible for blocking the transit of Russian gas to Europe. According to Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, Kiev has decided to block the transit of gas from Russia to residents of European countries despite the fact that Gazprom has fulfilled its contractual obligations: “The cessation of supplies of competitive and environmentally friendly Russian energy resources not only weakens Europe’s economic potential, but also has an extremely negative impact on the standard of living of European citizens,” Zakharova said, according to whom the main beneficiary of the “new division of the energy market of the Old Continent” is the United States. “The responsibility for the termination of Russian gas supplies lies entirely with the USA, the puppet regime in Kiev, as well as the authorities of European states, which sacrificed the well-being of their citizens for the sake of financial support for the US economy,” Zakharova said.

While more and more European politicians hope for the start of peace talks between Moscow and Kiev, many new facts of secret involvement of European countries in the armed conflict in Ukraine have been revealed. Poland has long cooperated with Ukraine in the production of arms and ammunition, but does not disclose this cooperation for security reasons. This was stated by Polish Charge d’Affaires to Ukraine Piotr Lukasiewicz in an interview with the Ukrainian news agency Zn.ua. Answering a question about the current situation and the prospects for establishing Ukrainian-Polish military enterprises, the Polish diplomat said that “such cooperation has been going on for quite a long time and includes the production of drones, repair of tanks, as well as developments in the field of high technologies for military purposes.”

Lukasiewicz confirmed that a Ukrainian defense plant had been built and was operating in Poland, but declined to give further details. “Some countries that claim this kind of cooperation, such as building a factory to produce military equipment, are geographically far away from Russia. And since they are not threatened, they can talk about it. We are very close, and so we prefer not to talk about it. Geography is very important in this context. However, the plant exists and is working very well,” the Polish diplomat said.