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Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry has downplayed reports of an unofficial meeting between former German politicians and Russian officials in Baku, saying the gathering has no significance for efforts to end Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi said Ukraine had not authorized any of the participants to engage in discussions on its behalf and described the reported talks as irrelevant.
“The meeting is as secret as it is insignificant. Some people, whose names are hardly searchable anymore, meet and talk about something. The Ukrainian side did not authorize any of them to represent it in any capacity. The importance of such meetings for the real peace process is close to zero,” Tykhyi told reporters.
His comments came after Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said that former senior German officials and representatives of the Russian government were simultaneously present in Baku on July 12–14, suggesting that an unofficial German-Russian meeting had taken place.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he had no knowledge of the gathering and stressed that it was not an official initiative of the German government.
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