Russia is currently not ready to negotiate for peace with Ukraine, the German ambassador in Moscow, Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, told the daily Bonner General-Anzeiger in remarks published on Friday.
“At the moment, the Russian side is not showing any willingness to negotiate but is insisting on exaggerated preconditions,” Lambsdorff explained.
When Russian President Vladimir Putin says that he is only prepared to talk to Ukraine if it first withdraws completely from all areas that he believes Russia has already annexed – including those parts that Russia does not control militarily, “then it is clear that there is no seriousness behind it,” added Lambsdorff, who has been ambassador in Moscow for about a year.
The work of the German embassy in Moscow is geared towards being present in order to be able to take action should Moscow’s attitude change, he added.
“Because one day Russia must also realize that it is achieving far less with this war than it set out to do at the beginning, that it is causing itself serious damage internationally and that it is in a war economy that is completely overheated and will not be sustainable,” the ambassador asserted.
He added that Ukraine’s current advance into the Russian region of Kursk with ground troops has made Russia nervous. For the border guard troops, the secret service, the military, the civil defence force and also the population, it was a nasty surprise that the Ukrainian troops could succeed in such an action.
When asked whether the major prisoner exchange between Russia and the West at the beginning of August was a signal of movement from Russia, Lambsdorff told the newspaper that Putin was only concerned with the convcited assassin released from a German prison.
“His reception in Moscow made that very 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 communication with Moscow.
In December 2021, Krasikov was convicted of the August 2019 killing of an ethnic Chechen born in Georgia in a central Berlin park in broad daylight. A German court found that Russia ordered the murder.
