“Putin did not answer the main question”: German media about the press conference | Russia and Russians: A View from Europe | Dw

The annual press conference of Russian President Vladimir Putin on December 23 was followed not only in Russia. Journalists in the German media were mostly disappointed with its results. Find out why in the DW press review.

The headlines already speak about the reaction of the German press to the results of Putin’s speech. The Tagesschau website published an article about the Russian leader’s press conference with the title “By the end of the year, without much peacefulness”, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) headlined the commentary on the topic with the words “No detente.” FAZ columnist Reinhard Veser interpreted the statements of the Russian president as a continuation of “propaganda preparations for war.” “The Kremlin is not just refusing to provide Ukraine with any security guarantees. Putin personally repeated on Thursday the myth of the threat of an attack from Ukraine as a potential justification for military intervention,” he writes.

Putin’s words about meeting with Biden – a chance for cooperation with Russia?

According to Frankfurter Rundschau journalist Viktor Funk, the press conference once again demonstrated “how difficult it is to talk to Putin.” “He answers critical questions, especially about geopolitics, blaming others, and for questions about local problems in Russia – garbage, medicine, infrastructure – he promises to personally tackle problems,” says Frankfurter Rundschau in a commentary.

Nevertheless, a newspaper columnist noticed hope in Putin’s speech. “Even Putin needs cooperation. This became noticeable, for example, when he said he hoped for early negotiations with US President Joe Biden,” notes Viktor Funk. To solve many problems, Russia needs international partners. “And there is a chance for this. The experience of interaction with Putin shows that this chance is small. But not using it is not an option. Too much is at stake – for international security, but also for many people in Russia who are forced to put up with this regime.” , – summarizes the author of Frankfurter Rundschau.

“Putin himself still does not know what will happen in Ukraine”

Süddeutsche Zeitung observer Sonja Zekri was less optimistic about the speech of the Russian President: “It is striking how isolated, lonely and even dull Russia looks like in these four hours by Vladimir Putin. He does not expect from Europe, from the West nothing good. But then who are Russia’s partners? And what can it offer them? “

According to Tsekri, Putin’s press conference could be called a “ridiculous carnival” if it were not about “the speech of the president, who may soon start a war with a neighboring country.”

The Süddeutsche Zeitung journalist interprets the prospect of negotiations with Biden in Geneva in January 2022, as described by the President of the Russian Federation, as follows: “Nothing has been decided yet, even Putin, apparently, himself does not know what will happen in Ukraine.” Putin’s press conference demonstrated “how even in four hours it is possible not to answer the most important question,” says the newspaper’s columnist.

At the same time, in the “few critical issues, there was a tension between the need for progress in a globalized country and its impossibility in the current political circumstances,” sums up the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

See also:

• History of the summits of the leaders of the USSR and Russia with the presidents of the United States

  Face to face

  Joe Biden became the fifth President of the United States to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In total, the number of different summits between the leaders of the USSR and Russia and the presidents of the United States has exceeded a hundred, and some of them have gone down in the history of world politics. The first face-to-face meeting of Biden and Putin in Geneva in June 2021 did not become a breakthrough, but the very fact that it took place is important, observers note.

• 

  History of the summits of the leaders of the USSR and Russia with the presidents of the United States

  First visit to the USA

  The first Soviet leader to pay an official visit to the United States was Nikita Khrushchev. In September 1959, he met with US President Dwight D. Eisenhower. It was not possible to reach an agreement on any of the discussed problems. The return visit did not take place because of the scandal with the American U2 spy plane shot down in May 1960 near Sverdlovsk.

• 

  History of the summits of the leaders of the USSR and Russia with the presidents of the United States

  Agreed to the wall

  Khrushchev’s negotiations with the new American President John F. Kennedy took place on June 4, 1961 at the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna. The main topic was the fate of Berlin and Germany as a whole. The parties fiercely defended their positions and failed to agree on key items of the agenda. Two months later, the Berlin Wall divided the city into eastern and western sections.

• 

  History of the summits of the leaders of the USSR and Russia with the presidents of the United States

  Discovering Moscow

  Richard Nixon became the first US president to pay an official visit to the USSR. The negotiations held in May 1972 with the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Leonid Brezhnev marked the beginning of a new stage in relations, which was called “detente”. In Moscow, the Agreement on the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (SALT-1) and the Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems (ABM) were signed.

• 

  History of the summits of the leaders of the USSR and Russia with the presidents of the United States

  On the eve of the war in Afghanistan

  The entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan in December 1979 caused a new deterioration in Soviet-American relations. Six months earlier, Brezhnev had met in Vienna with the new President of the United States, Jimmy Carter. The negotiations resulted in the signing of the Treaty on the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (SALT-2), which, among other things, limited the deployment of nuclear weapons in outer space.

• 

  History of the summits of the leaders of the USSR and Russia with the presidents of the United States

  The end of the “evil empire”

  Relations between Mikhail Gorbachev and US President Ronald Reagan initially went wrong. After the first meeting in Geneva in 1985, one christened another “dinosaur”, the other called a colleague a “die-hard Bolshevik.” That did not prevent them from holding several meetings and signing a number of important documents in the field of disarmament. Arriving in Moscow in 1988, Reagan declared that he no longer considered the USSR an “evil empire.”

• 

  The history of the summits of the leaders of the USSR and Russia with the presidents of the United States

  Seasickness summit

  A two-day meeting between Mikhail Gorbachev and the new American leader, George W. Bush, took place in 1989 in Malta aboard the Soviet cruise ship Maxim Gorky, docked in the port of Valletta. Despite a strong storm, the summit opened a fundamentally new stage in relations between the two countries. In particular, for the first time in history, a joint press conference was held between the two leaders.

• 

  History of the summits of the leaders of the USSR and Russia with the presidents of the United States

  Point in the Cold War

  The meeting of the first Russian President Boris Yeltsin with George W. Bush in the United States in the winter of 1992 summed up the 46-year Cold War. A declaration was signed in which it was stated that Russia and the United States no longer regard each other as possible adversaries. A year later, in Moscow, politicians signed the Treaty on the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (START II).

• 

  History of the summits of the leaders of the USSR and Russia with the presidents of the United States

  Friend bill

  Boris Yeltsin and the next President of the United States, Bill Clinton, were on friendly terms. They met several times. In 1997 in Helsinki, during the last summit of the two leaders, Clinton persuaded Yeltsin not to impede NATO expansion, promising to admit Russia to the G7, promote WTO accession, and help restructure Russia’s debt in the Paris Club of creditors.

• 

  History of the summits of the leaders of the USSR and Russia with the presidents of the United States

  On Russia’s accession to NATO

  In 2000, Bill Clinton came to Moscow, where he met with the new President of Russia, Vladimir Putin. No important documents were signed. The main sensation was voiced by Putin many years later. In an interview with American film director Oliver Stone, the Russian leader said that he suggested that Clinton consider the option of Russia’s joining NATO, and he was not against it.

• 

  History of the summits of the leaders of the USSR and Russia with the presidents of the United States

  He is the king

  In November 2001, Putin became the first foreign leader to visit not only the ranch of US President George W. Bush in Texas, but also attended a closed CIA briefing for the head of the White House. At the same time, the cooling in relations between Russia and the United States began precisely under Bush Jr., who already in 2006 declared: “Putin is no longer a democrat. He is a tsar. We have lost him.”

• 

  The history of the summits of the leaders of the USSR and Russia with the presidents of the United States

  Burger reboot

  A brief period of warming in Russian-American relations fell on Dmitry Medvedev’s presidency in the Russian Federation. In September 2009, he visited the United States, visited Twitter headquarters and started his microblogging, received the latest iPhone from Apple CEO Steve Jobs and had breakfast with US President Barack Obama at a burger shop. And on April 8, 2010 in Prague, Medvedev and Obama signed the START III Treaty.

• 

  History of the summits of the leaders of the USSR and Russia with the presidents of the United States

  It blew cold

  Shortly after the return of Vladimir Putin to the Kremlin, a new deterioration in Russian-American relations began: from 2012 to 2018, the presidents of the two countries did not make official visits. During the bilateral meeting between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump in Helsinki in 2018, not only no agreements were signed, but not even a joint final statement.

  Author: Vitaly Kropman

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