Former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder met Russian President Vladimir Putin for several hours on Thursday evening in a bid to end the war in Ukraine, Germany’s Bild am Sonntag reported, although it was unclear what was achieved.
Citing a person with detailed insight into Schroeder’s activities, the weekly newspaper said Schroeder had also had a long talk with one of Putin’s closest advisers.
He left Moscow early on Saturday morning with his wife and flew to Istanbul, Turkey, the paper said, without disclosing any further details of the conversations.
The former chancellor, who is a personal friend of Putin and has links to Russian companies, had met a group of Ukrainians with links to the country’s delegation for peace talks with Russia in Turkey on Monday last week, Bild am Sonntag reported.
The source told the weekly that Schroeder was currently the only person to have had direct contact with Putin and top Ukrainian officials.
News Web site Politico first reported that Schroeder was flying to Moscow for talks with Putin and German government sources said it had not agreed to any meeting nor been involved in one.
The German government’s press office referred to remarks made by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Friday, when he declined to comment on the meeting beyond saying that he would take note of any results and include them in other efforts he was involved in.
Scholz also travels to Turkey today.
Schroeder, Social Democrat chancellor from 1998 to 2005, is on the board of Russian oil giant Rosneft and is chairman of the shareholders’ committee of the company in charge of building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which has been shelved.
He has faced calls from some German government politicians to step down from his roles over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Nobody was immediately available at Schroeder’s office.
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