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.
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS