High-ranking representatives of Germany and Russia want to meet at the beginning of January to discuss the Ukraine conflict.
The foreign policy advisor to Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Jens Plötner, and the Russian negotiator for Ukraine, Dmitri Kosak, made a phone call on Thursday for the physical meeting, as the German press agency learned from government circles on Friday.
In the conversation, Plötner once again called for a de-escalation of the situation in Ukraine and in the border area with Russia and emphasized the need to discuss the further situation with Ukraine and France in the so-called Normandy format. "The goal of the German side remains to achieve a swift reactivation of the Normandy format," said the government.
On Tuesday, Scholz had telephoned Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time since taking office.
This conversation also dealt with negotiations in the Normandy format.
The four-way meetings between Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France have existed since the beginning of the conflict between pro-Russian separatists and government troops in eastern Ukraine in 2014. The last summit took place in Paris at the end of 2019.
The agreements made there have not yet been implemented.
A Russian troop deployment near the Ukrainian border has been a cause for concern for weeks.
Russia is now demanding "security guarantees" from the West, one of which is NATO's renouncement of Ukraine's accession.