Ukraine\u2019s president,\u00a0Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has rejected a request by the German president,\u00a0Frank-Walter Steinmeier, to visit Kyiv along with other European politicians on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Steinmeier, a former foreign minister and erstwhile ally of the ex-chancellor Gerhard Schr\u00f6der, is on a state visit in Poland, where he is discussing the implications of the Russian war in\u00a0Ukraine\u00a0with his Polish counterpart, Andrzej Duda.<\/p>\n
According a report in the German newspaper Bild, Steinmeier had planned to travel to Kyiv with the presidents of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland on Wednesday. However, his request for a meeting was rejected by Zelenskiy, with Bild citing the reason as the German Social Democrat\u2019s previously close ties to the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, and his history as an advocate of close Russian-German economic ties.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all here know\u00a0Steinmeier\u2019s close ties to Russia, which have also been marked by the Steinmeier formula,\u201d an anonymous Ukrainian diplomat told Bild. \u201cHe is currently not welcome in Kyiv. We will see whether that will change one day.\u201d<\/p>\n
The\u00a0\u201cSteinmeier formula\u201d\u00a0was a proposal made by the then foreign minister in 2016 with the intention of breaking a deadlock in negotiations between Ukraine and Russia over peace in eastern Ukraine. The proposal, a simplified version of the\u00a0Minsk agreements, called for elections in the separatist-held territories under Ukrainian legislation, supervised by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). The attempt failed after neither Moscow nor Kyiv implemented the Minsk agreement.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday afternoon, Steinmeier seemed to confirm that his request for a meeting with Zelenskiy in Kyiv had been rejected by Ukraine. The German president said he had wanted to travel to Kyiv \u201cto send out a strong message of European solidarity with Ukraine\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was prepared,\u201d Steinmeier said. \u201cBut apparently \u2013 and I have to acknowledge this \u2013 it was not desired in Kyiv.\u201d<\/p>\n
The embarrassing rejection comes as Germany\u2019s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has come under fire for not having travelled to Ukraine himself so far, unlike the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, and the EU leader, Ursula von der Leyen.<\/p>\n
Steinmeier has recently conceded the failure of his past strategy of western rapprochement with Moscow.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy sticking to [the Baltic Sea pipeline project] Nord Stream 2, that was definitely a mistake,\u201d he said in Berlin on 4 April. \u201cWe held on to bridges that Russia no longer believed in, and of which our partners warned us.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cWe failed to build a common European house. I did not believe Vladimir Putin would embrace his country\u2019s complete economic, political and moral ruin for the sake of his imperial madness.\u201d<\/p>\n
source:theguardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ukraine\u2019s president,\u00a0Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has rejected a request by the German president,\u00a0Frank-Walter Steinmeier, to visit Kyiv along with other European politicians on Wednesday. Steinmeier, a former foreign minister and erstwhile ally of the ex-chancellor Gerhard Schr\u00f6der, is on a state visit in Poland, where he is discussing the implications of the Russian war in\u00a0Ukraine\u00a0with his Polish […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":20145,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[6708,5722,5880,8989,5090,157,5268,1425,4024,5799,8041,5692,159,6621,9505,6159,5345,12432,5573,12431,66,5342,12186,6843,7181,9833,5895,5340,8000,7202,11973,5396,837,11698,3805,3174,71,3457,5217,5655,7211,5879,8840,7931,6584,5180,6885,5555,10976,6238,6348,694,6886,10044,5251,3954,6874],"class_list":["post-20144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-andrzej-duda","tag-anonymous","tag-baltic-sea","tag-berlin","tag-boris","tag-boris-johnson","tag-british","tag-chancellor","tag-common","tag-democrat","tag-diplomat","tag-estonia","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-fire","tag-foreign-minister","tag-frank-walter-steinmeier","tag-german-chancellor-olaf-scholz","tag-german-president","tag-germany","tag-kyiv","tag-latvia","tag-lavrov","tag-lithuania","tag-meeting","tag-minsk","tag-moscow","tag-negotiations","tag-olaf-scholz","tag-one","tag-peace","tag-poland","tag-politicians","tag-president","tag-prime-minister","tag-putin","tag-russia","tag-russian","tag-security","tag-sergei-lavrov","tag-steinmeier","tag-strong","tag-territories","tag-travel","tag-ukraine","tag-ukraines-president","tag-ukrainian","tag-ursula","tag-ursula-von-der-leyen","tag-us","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-volodymyr-zelenskiy","tag-von-der-leyen","tag-war","tag-will","tag-zelenskiy"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}