Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German president, has abandoned plans to visit Kyiv after admitting he would not be welcome in the Ukrainian capital in what is being seen as a serious snub for one of Germany’s senior politicians, reported Financial Times on Tuesday.
Steinmeier, who has been on a state visit to Warsaw, said his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda had recently suggested the two of them travel to Kyiv along with the presidents of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia “to send a strong signal of European solidarity with Ukraine”.
“I was prepared [to do that],” he went on. “But apparently, and I have to take this on board, it wasn’t wanted in Kyiv.” Steinmeier has come under sharp criticism in recent days over his closeness to Russia, a country he once described as an “indispensable partner”. He was speaking after the mass circulation Bild Zeitung newspaper cited Ukrainian officials as saying that the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky would refuse to meet Steinmeier if he came to Kyiv.
While serving as Germany’s foreign minister, Steinmeier had a strong relationship with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. He was also seen as a strong supporter of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that was designed to bring Russian gas directly to Germany, bypassing Ukraine, and which was suspended in February.
“We know all Steinmeier’s close relations to Russia,” a Ukrainian diplomat was quoted as saying by Bild. “He is not welcome in Kyiv at the moment. We’ll see if that changes in future.” Steinmeier has previously admitted errors in his Russian policy. “Sticking with Nord Stream 2, that was clearly a mistake,” he said. “We stuck to bridges that Russia no longer believed in and which our partners warned us about.” Andrij Melnyk, Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, had accused Steinmeier of “spinning a web of contacts with Russia”. He accused the German president of sharing Russian president Vladimir Putin’s dismissive view of Ukrainian nationhood. /Argumentum.al
