Steinmeier talks on phone with Zelenskiy

Berlin (dpa) -Germany’s President Frank-Walter Steinmeier spoke on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Thursday. A spokeswoman for the German president said that some past confusion had been cleared up, and that Steinmeier had expressed his “solidarity, respect and support for the courageous struggle of the Ukrainian people against the Russian aggressor” to Zelenskiy. Both presidents had described the conversation as “very important” and “very good”, she added.

According to the Office of the Federal President, the German president himself and the German government have been invited by Zelenskiy to visit Kyiv. During the telephone conversation, the two presidents had agreed to “leave their past behind and concentrate on future cooperation,” a spokesperson for the Ukrainian president told German newspaper “Bild”. The confusion had come about after the Ukrainian side had rejected a visit by Steinmeier to Kyiv in mid-April.

Meanwhile, Bundestag President Bärbel Bas plans to travel to Kyiv as Germany's highest representative to date. The official occasion is the commemoration of World War II in Ukraine next Sunday. Bas has “the wish to travel to Ukraine at the invitation of her Ukrainian counterpart Ruslan Stefanchuk to commemorate with him all victims of the Second World War and to hold political talks,” a parliamentary spokeswoman said.