New Delhi, Sep 3 (UNI) Germany today voiced appreciation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging for a speedy peace agreement in Ukraine during his bilateral talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Tianjin earlier this week.
“The fact that PM Modi when he met with President Putin of Russia pointed to a speedy peace agreement in Ukraine is important to us. We are working with our European friends to see that peace returns soon,” German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said during a press meet after his talks with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar here today.
“We are working with our European partners in confronting Russia as international law is being violated. It is a challenge, to reach a perfect peace agreement on such matters,” he added.
Wadephul said Germany realises there is a clear political stance of India to contribute to bringing about the process of peace in Ukraine. “Here too we see eye to eye, and I agree that today’s talks have been very fruitful,” he added.
“In this conflict, we are pursuing a policy that we have to be objective that Russia and Ukraine sit for negotiations. We have seen that Russia is not willing to sit for negotiations, while Ukraine has expressed its willingness to do so. Our only demand is that weapons fall silent, and that is a reasonable condition. And we want Putin to sit at the negotiating table (with Zelenskyy),” he added.
Asked about the additional US tariffs on India that President Donald Trump said is being slapped over New Delhi’s purchase of Russian oil and whether Germany concurred with it, the German FM sidestepped the issue.
He spoke instead about the European sanctions on Russia. “We have used sanctions on Russia, to ensure that Russia is unable to fund its war. We want to remove the financial basis that Russia uses to fund the war,” he said, adding, “And at same time we don’t want to affect countries that need energy”, in reference to India and its purchase of Russian oil.
