Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has spoken out in favor of talks with Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine. “It’s important that we keep in touch with Putin as well,” Sanchez told US news channel CNN on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos yesterday. “For example, I strongly advocate that the French government and the German government … take the lead here.”
A return to the Normandy format is conceivable – a contact group made up of Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine, as there was before the start of the war. Chancellors of the four countries usually meet for this purpose. The other EU member states would support Paris and Berlin in such an initiative, socialist Sánchez said. When asked whether Putin might interpret the West’s willingness to talk as a “weakness”, he replied: “No, I don’t think so.”