Scholz speaks about his latest conversation with Putin 

Chancellor of Germany Olaf Scholz said that he last had a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin about a year and a half ago.

“Our latest phone conversation was in December 2022; before that we used to talk with each other more often,” Scholz said in an interview to the newspaper Märkische Allgemeine.

The chancellor noted that a few days before the outbreak of the Ukrainian conflict, they personally had a lengthy conversation for more than four hours in Moscow.

The Kremlin has repeatedly noted that it has never refused to enter into a dialogue with Kyiv. As noted by Dmitry Peskov, the spokesperson for the Russian president, there are no prerequisites for that now, because the move toward peace has now been excluded by both Ukraine and the collective West. According to him, they can move to peace only if the de facto situation and new realities are taken into account; Moscow’s demands are well known.