Andriy Melnyk has sharply criticized the Federal President's peace concert for Ukraine.

Our conversation took place even before Frank-Walter Steinmeier reacted to Melnyk's allegations.

Simon Strauss

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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Butscha's pictures shocked the Western world public.

How do you look at these pictures?

Not only as a Ukrainian, as a person, as someone who knows this area very well.

Many of my friends have houses there and have had to flee.

A few days have now passed, but we, including my family, cannot understand it as human beings.

And we hope that what we have now seen will finally be understood in Germany too.

What do you see in the pictures?

Is this an act of vengeance by a morally ignorant force, or is it systematic terror against the civilian population?

I think it's both, but the second is more likely.

Putin is waging a war of annihilation.

Not only against the Ukrainian state, but also against the Ukrainians, against the civilians.

The scale of Bucha's atrocities proves that they are part of Putin's perfidious warfare.

Putin is acting systematically to annihilate the Ukrainians or, failing that, to expel and intimidate them.

Because you can imagine what the people in Sumy, in Chernihiv, in Kharkiv are thinking when they see that these murderers are now being sent in Belarus towards eastern Ukraine in order to step up the offensive there.

I believe that world opinion should now wake up and stop urging us to end this war as soon as possible, to introduce a ceasefire without the withdrawal of Russian troops.

The Washington Post has also reported that the Ukrainian army is targeting civilians by deliberately placing military equipment in residential areas.

Couldn't this strategy weaken efforts to hold Russia accountable for war crimes?

I am not a soldier or an officer.

I'm just a diplomat.

And of course we have to take such reports seriously if they are true.

I hope that such hints will also be heard in Kyiv in the Defense Ministry.

Because that must not be the case, even if most of the warfare is carried out in cities.

Our soldiers are familiar with international humanitarian law.

There was one incident - and it was not covered up - where captured soldiers were shot in the legs.

An investigation was immediately launched.

It's war, nerves are on edge.

The cruelty seen day and night is something that is devastating to a normal human psyche.

You can't understand how bad things are for us right now.

Mr Ambassador, you recently canceled your participation in a benefit concert given by the Federal President because Russian soloists were performing there.

Their reasoning was that this concert – to which a Ukrainian composer was also invited – was a friendly signal to Putin.

Do you really believe that a benefit concert can have such an effect?

Every action, even a concert, has a specific goal and effect.

For me, as the Ukrainian ambassador, it is still not clear why it was necessary to try a gesture of reconciliation in this situation, in the sense of: Ukrainians and Russians sit together, make music, applaud each other and enjoy the culture.

It was strange for me, because as long as Russia's war is raging on our soil with such cruelty, I can't imagine people celebrating together.

Of course, one can hope that reconciliation will happen quickly, but one has to be realistic: after the Second World War, it took decades for a partnership to develop between France and Germany.

And I believe that in our case it will take even longer.

That's why the concert at Bellevue Palace was premature.

This concert caused quite a stir in Ukraine, and I didn't hear a single reaction in my home country saying, "Maybe you should have gone instead."