Zelensky Has Meltdown After Scholz Calls Putin for First Time in 2 Years
Zelensky Has Meltdown After Scholz Calls Putin for First Time in 2 Years
Warns that such contact opens "Pandora's Box."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, best known for playing the piano with no hands, rushed to X on Friday in hopes of dashing any progress toward peace German Chancellor Olaf Scholz may have made during his hour-long phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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“Scholz told me that he planned to call Putin,” he said. “His call, in my opinion, opens Pandora's Box. There may now be other conversations and phone calls. Just a lot of words.”
Scholz initiated an hour-long phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin — the first such call by any Western leader in two years — just over a week Donald Trump was elected president in the U.S., indicating that he wants to quickly end the conflict.
The call resulted in no major breakthroughs. Scholz reportedly told Putin that Germany will continue its support for Ukraine and the Russian president repeated that any negotiations will have to take into account the new territorial realities on the ground. Putin has also said Ukraine’s membership in NATO is a red line.
While Scholz, who the Economist noted stands to be “one of the shortest-serving chancellors in Germany’s democratic history,” after a snap election was announced in Berlin a day after Trump’s election win, has been one of the most vocal critics of Putin but has irritated other European leadership over refusing to provide Kyiv with its Taurus long-range missiles.
The Trends Journal said since before the invasion, that it was opposed to Putin’s decision to carry out the aggression, but we understood his reasoning. The Biden administration refused any meaningful negotiations before the February 2022 operation. But while we opposed the invasion, we also called on Kyiv to come to its senses and negotiate to end the war to save lives and land. NATO was never going to come to its aid.
Scholz has been feeling some domestic pressure over his support for Ukraine. Germany’s Christian Democratic Union, a center-right party, has been a steadfast supporter of Ukraine’s war effort against Russia and its members have criticized Scholz, a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), for not doing enough to help Ukraine.
Sahra Wagenknecht, the founder of the Wagenknecht, a left-wing populist party, appeals to Germans who seek peace and said she would oppose any new U.S. missiles on German territory. She said her party would only form a coalition with political parties that seek a diplomatic solution in Ukraine.
She noted that there have been recent divisions within Germany—once again divided by East and West. She said Germans who live in the East agree with her approach, while Germans in the West tend to approve such missile deployments.
Zelensky said Scholz’s call is “exactly what Putin has long sought.”
“It is critical for him to weaken his isolation, as well as Russia's isolation, and to hold mere talks that will lead nowhere. He [Putin] has been doing this for decades. This has allowed Russia to avoid making any changes to its policies, effectively doing nothing, which has ultimately led to this war. We understand all the current challenges and we know what to do. And we want to make it clear: there will be no “Minsk-3”; we need real peace.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was a player in Minsk-2, slipped last year when she admitted that the Minsk agreements were an effective ruse to give Ukraine time to “get stronger” for its next conflict with Russia.
Merkel made the admission during an interview with a German newspaper. She said Ukraine used the ceasefire after the two peace deals as a time to get stronger, “as you can see today.”
Putin has said Russia was hoping for peace agreements in 2014, but it was essentially fooled.
“We all endured, endured, endured and hoped for some kind of peace agreement, but now it turns out that we were simply fooled,” Putin told reporters.
TRENDPOST: Zelensky said in an interview in 2023 that he informed the key players in the 2019 Minsk II Agreements— Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron—that the deal was essentially a “concession” and he would not abide by its guidelines.