BERLIN, September 17. /TASS/. The Russian side took note of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s remarks about the necessity of talks on Ukraine but received no specific proposals, Russian Ambassador to Germany Sergey Nechaev said in an interview with Deutschlandfunk Radio.
"We readily take notice of the chancellor’s remarks. Possibly, this means that the realization has emerged in the West that a peace plan is needed," the diplomat said. He reiterated that earlier, some EU representatives, the Hungarian prime minister in particular, made attempts to present peace initiatives but they were not welcome in the European Union. "I do not know whether or not this initiative would be welcome now. In any case, we have not yet seen a peace plan, the text of a peace plan," the envoy noted.
The Russian diplomat stressed that the proposals should be valid and completely clear in essence. "Only then will we be able to decide whether it is worth talking based on this. If this is again about a new version of the previous so-called Zelensky formula, these provisions in another iteration, with a different wording, then this is absolutely unacceptable to us and you know this," Nechaev added.
On September 11, Scholz told the Bundestag that it was necessary to hold another conference on settling the Ukrainian conflict, in which Russia should take part. On September 8, in an interview with the ZDF television broadcaster he remarked that the moment had come in the conflict in Ukraine to discuss how to achieve peace and advocated Russia's participation in a new summit on resolving the crisis. Scholz argued that "in any case" a new conference would be held.
On September 12, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a roundtable meeting on Ukraine with foreign ambassadors that Russia was committed to resolving the Ukrainian crisis but had not yet seen any reciprocal readiness for honest diplomacy.