War in Ukraine: Berlin calls it "lure" Putin’s words on the end of the conflict

The German Defense Minister said on Monday May 11 that he suspected that Vladimir Putin’s remarks about an imminent end to the war in Ukraine were a “lure”. On May 9, the Russian president surprised by raising the possibility that the war was “coming to an end”, then by saying that his friend, the former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, would in his eyes make a good mediator for a dialogue with Europe.

“If he sees the end of this war approaching, why doesn’t he just put an end to it? He would then be in control of the calendar,” said Boris Pistorius during a press conference in kyiv. “It is to be feared, even if I hope I am wrong, that this is a new lure,” he added, noting that Putin had the habit of “playing with rigged cards” each time there was talk of a truce in Ukraine.

According to Boris Pistorius, the Russian president, faced with growing military losses and weak territorial gains, “sought to divert attention from his own weaknesses.”

The spokesperson for the German government, Stefan Kornelius, for his part said, during a press conference in Berlin, that he did not see any “substantial progress” with a view to talks with Russia, despite Vladimir Putin’s remarks. According to him, Russia “knows who its interlocutors are in Europe, if it seriously wants to negotiate.”

Gerhard Schröder is widely criticized in Germany, as elsewhere in Europe, for having agreed, after leaving the German chancellery, to work for the Russian state, by joining the gas giant Gazprom.