Chancellor of Austria paid a visit to the president of russia Volodymyr Putin on Monday and reported that he returned pessimistic about the prospects of peace. As The New York Times reports, the Chancellor Karl Nehammer expressed fears that Putin plans to make this war even more brutal.
Karl Nehammer is the first western leader to personally meet with Putin after the invasion in Ukraine.
Chancellor Nehammer told that Putin brushed away accusations in military crimes and stated they were staged by Ukraine. According to him it seems the russian troops are mobilising for a full-scale assault on Donbas in the East of Ukraine.
In the end Putin told the Austrian Chancellor: “It would be better, if it” - the war- “ended soon”, - said Nehammer. But the meaning of these words was unclear: they could signal that Putin is ready for further peace talks or that he is preparing a quick and brutal assault on Donbas.
“We can have no illusions: President Putin has totally adopted the logic of war, and is acting accordingly,” Mr. Nehammer said. “This is why I believe it is so important to permanently confront him with the facts of the war.”
According to the words of Chancellor of Austria he told the russian president that as long as people were dying in Ukraine, “the sanctions against Russia will stay in place and will be toughened further”.
Last week Nehammer visited Kyiv where he met with Volodymyr Zelensky. During his visit to Ukraine the Chancellor also went to Bucha. Together with the head of Kyiv regional military administration Oleksandr Pvlyuk and the head of humanitarian department Oleksiy Kuleba they visited the temporary mass grave of the local civilians killed by the occupiers.