Russia and Germany’s top diplomats hold first talks since invasion of Ukraine

Russia and Germany’s top diplomats hold first talks since invasion of Ukraine

The foreign ministers of Russia and Germany met in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on Saturday in the first such talks since before Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Relations between Moscow and Berlin, a close ally of Ukraine, have been frozen since the Russian invasion, and tensions escalated further after a drone incident at Leipzig/Halle Airport in eastern Germany in August.

In a sign of the continued frostiness, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a news conference that he had learned nothing new from his German counterpart in the talks that Berlin had not already said publicly in its official statements.

“I told him that frankly … you could just have called me and said: ‘read my statement’,” Lavrov said.