The German opposition accuses Scholz of fueling Russian propaganda through the telephone conversation he had with Putin

Vladimir Putin “will take the fact that Scholz called him more as a sign of weakness than strength,” Jurgen Hardt, the foreign policy spokesman for the conservative CDU party, told German radio station Deutschlandfunk.

He reproached the chancellor for having contributed to a “propaganda success” of the Kremlin, for reasons of German domestic politics.

On Friday, the chancellor spoke for an hour on the phone with Putin, for the first time in almost two years.

After the collapse of the governing coalition last week, Scholz is to run for re-election next February. According to the latest polls, his social democratic party, the SPD, is rated with 15% of the vote, well behind the CDU/CSU (32%).

Olaf Scholz “wanted to show first of all in Germany that he is the one who bets on negotiations, on dialogue”, accused Hardt.

During the telephone conversation, the chancellor asked Russia to show its “willingness to start negotiations with Ukraine for a just and lasting peace”, according to a statement from the German government.

According to the German daily Der Spiegel, citing government sources, the chancellor wanted to “confront” Putin with the reality of the war and with the critical view that some countries have of Russia.

But for Hardt, the call did not have the desired effect on Putin, who understands “only signals of power”, such as the threat to massively increase military aid to Ukraine.

Scholz “didn’t make any concrete new proposals and didn’t even set a quasi-ultimatum,” he added.

The phone conversation angered Kiev, which saw it as “an attempt to appease” Moscow.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Scholz of opening a “Pandora’s box”.

SPD general secretary Matthias Miersch defended the chancellor’s phone call, saying it was important to make diplomatic progress on the conflict in Ukraine.

Germany is Kiev’s second largest arms supplier after the United States, but has refrained from sending long-range weapons to Ukraine to avoid further escalation of the conflict.

AGERPRES