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Germany not pushing harder for Minsk deals 'mistake' — Saxony minister-president

Michael Kretschmer believes that Ukraine needs a peace initiative, bringing in China, Turkey and other countries to mediate negotiations with Russia

BERLIN, November 28. /TASS/. The German leadership erred in not pushing hard enough for the implementation of the Minsk agreements after 2014, Minister-President of Saxony Michael Kretschmer said.

Kiev needs a peace plan to settle the conflict, not more weapons, the official said. "We cannot immediately correct all the mistakes of the past. After 2014 <...> we should have insisted much more strongly on the implementation of the Minsk agreements, including by Ukraine," he said in an interview with Der Tagesspiegel. "Today, no one mentions this," the minister-president added.

In Kretschmer's opinion, intentional efforts are needed to end the Ukrainian conflict. He criticized German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who, he said, "always only wants to send weapons." Kretschmer believes that Ukraine needs a peace initiative, bringing in China, Turkey and other countries to mediate negotiations with Russia.

Kretschmer has been in charge of Saxony since 2017. He belongs to the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which is currently the opposition party in the German parliament. Since 2017, he has also chaired the CDU's Saxony branch. He was a member of the Bundestag from 2002 to 2017, also serving as deputy chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary faction since 2009.