MOSCOW, January 24. /TASS/. German Ambassador to Russia Alexander Lambsdorf has said that he sees no sign of diplomatic relations between Moscow and Berlin rupturing in the near future.
"I don't see any signs of this [tendency] either in Berlin or in Moscow," the senior diplomat said in an interview with RTVI, answering a question about the possibility of severing Russian-German diplomatic relations in the near future.
According to the ambassador, although communication between diplomats and officials in both countries is now much more limited than before, diplomatic relations have to be maintained to avoid escalation.
"The worst thing is to abolish the diplomacy that forms the basis of our relations," Lambsdorf believes. "These misunderstandings, the threat of misinterpreting what the other party is going to do, would increase many times over. If you look back at history, situations like this (when governments get their wires crossed) may lead to terrible misunderstandings, which, in turn, may lead to an escalation in international relations. Therefore, I think that although diplomatic relations between Russia and about 140 countries have suffered significantly, <...> it is still crucial to continue cooperating."
The ambassador also commented on the article in the German newspaper Bild, which, referencing a secret document from the Bundeswehr (German armed forces), says that Germany is allegedly developing a plan to start a war between NATO and Russia by the summer of 2025. According to the senior diplomat, Berlin does not expect this showdown to actually happen. "I want to say that Bild has a series of publications on these topics. I do not know where they have found the document, what it represents, or if one exists. I have no idea. We should assume that the document exists - otherwise the newspaper would not have written about it. But the scenarios it contains are very theoretical, hypothetical - we do not expect this to happen," the diplomat said.