Ukraine's Foreign Ministry Reacts to 'Secret' Meeting in Baku Between Former German and Russian Officials
Ukraine's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi dismissed a meeting of former German and Russian high-ranking officials in Azerbaijan as 'unimportant' and 'empty.' The meeting, which took place without Ukraine's mandate, he said, has no bearing on the real peace process.
Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has responded to a recent meeting between former high-ranking officials from Germany and Russia, held in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. Spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi told journalists that the meeting is "as secret as it is unimportant."
According to him, the participants are people "whose names are practically no longer found in search engines." He emphasized that the Ukrainian side did not authorize any of them, therefore the significance of such meetings for the real peace process is "close to zero."
The unofficial German delegation included Ronald Pofalla, former head of Chancellor Angela Merkel's office, and Matthias Platzeck, former governor of the state of Brandenburg. The Russian side was represented by Valery Fadeev, chairman of the Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, and Viktor Zubkov, a former deputy prime minister under Putin who currently heads the state energy conglomerate Gazprom.
Earlier, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev stated that his country's territory "was used to hold the meeting without our knowledge."
In early July, US President Donald Trump publicly sided with Ukraine on the location of peace negotiations with Russia. Additionally, EU Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius warned against normalizing relations with the Kremlin in the context of a potential peace settlement.
