Scholz urges Putin to withdraw troops and negotiate with Ukraine in rare phone call

Olaf Scholz and Vladimir Putin held a rare phone call yesterday in which the German chancellor urged the Russian president to withdraw troops and negotiate with Ukraine to achieve a just and lasting peace.

- Pjotr Sauer Kate Connolly Berlin

The one-hour call, their first since December 2022, came after Putin reportedly spoke to the US president-elect, Donald Trump, with the incoming US administration vowing to push for a swift end to the war.

A German government spokesman, Steffen Hebestreit, said Scholz had stressed the unbreakable resolve of Germany to support Ukraine in "Russia's war of aggression" as long as possible.

Hebestreit said Scholz had spoken to Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, before the call with Putin and was planning a call with Kyiv afterwards. He added that Scholz would brief western allies on his conversation with the Russian leader.

According to a readout of the conversation posted by the Kremlin, Putin told Scholz that any potential agreements on Ukraine should be based on the "new territorial realities and address the root causes of the conflict".

Putin also said Russia's demands for ending the conflict were "well known", referring to a speech he made in June in which he staked out a maximalist position for an end to the war: Ukraine would have to drop its Nato ambitions and withdraw all its troops from the territory of four regions claimed by Russia.