“Good talk”
Steinmeier is on the phone with Selenskyj
5/5/2022, 2:13 p.m
Presidents Steinmeier and Zelenskyj telephone each other and clear up the “irritations”. Nothing now stands in the way of the Federal President traveling to Kyiv. First, however, drives the number two in the state.
Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj on the phone today. The Office of the Federal President announced that the irritations from the past had been cleared up.
According to the Office of the Federal President, it was a good conversation. Selenskyj expressly thanked for the German support, Steinmeier had promised that Germany would continue to help. According to information from the Office of the Federal President, the Ukrainian side regretted the “irritation” that had occurred.
Steinmeier originally wanted to travel to Kyiv on April 14 with the presidents of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, but was not wanted there. With this conflict, Chancellor Olaf Scholz explained why he could not travel to Ukraine for the time being. “It’s a problem that the President of the Federal Republic of Germany was uninvited. And that’s in the room,” he said on Wednesday after the cabinet meeting in Meseberg. The pressure on Scholz to also visit Selenskyj after a whole series of heads of state and government increased on Tuesday after CDU leader Friedrich Merz had visited the Ukrainian president.
Only on Thursday did the President of the Bundestag Bärbel Bas announce that she wanted to travel to Kyiv next Sunday at the invitation of her Ukrainian counterpart Ruslan Stefantschuk. The official occasion is the World War II commemoration in Ukraine. After Steinmeier, the SPD politician has the second-highest office in Germany in terms of protocol.