The German Chancellor and the French President also demanded the release of 2,500 fighters in the Azovstal steelworks, located in Mariupol.
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The interview lasted 80 minutes, on the initiative of the German Chancellor and the French President. Olaf Scholz and Emmanuel Macron asked, on Saturday May 28, during a telephone conversation with Vladimir Poutine, “serious direct negotiations” with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, “as quickly as possible”. The interview was “devoted to the continuation of the Russian war against Ukraine and the efforts to end it”.
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The two leaders “insisted on an immediate ceasefire and a withdrawal of Russian troops”, says a press release from the German Chancellery. Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz have “called on the Russian President for serious direct negotiations with the Ukrainian President and a diplomatic solution to the conflict”. “Tany solution to the war [doit] be negotiated between Moscow and Kyiv, with respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine”they insisted, according to the French presidency.
In addition, the French President and the German Chancellor asked their Russian counterpart to release 2,500 Ukrainian fighters entrenched in the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol, who were taken prisoner by the Russians. The German Chancellor and the French President also “called on the Russian President to ensure an improvement in the humanitarian situation of the civilian population”.
Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz have also insisted with Vladimir Putin “on the urgency of lifting the blockade of Odessa in order to allow the export of Ukrainian cereals through the Black Sea and to avoid a world food crisis”. The Russian President thus promised “to grant ships access to the port for the export of grain, without it being exploited militarily by Russia if it was previously cleared of mines”.