German president rules out return to previous relations with Russia

"I am confident that under Russian President Vladimir Putin, there will be no return to normal life, to the status quo with Moscow," German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in an interview with ZDF on April 5, Report informs, citing TASS.

He protested that there had been many failed attempts by the West to include Russia in the overall architecture of European security. The German president admitted that a wrong policy was pursued toward Russia. Frank-Walter Steinmeier also considered the support for the North Stream-2 natural gas pipeline as one of these mistakes.

Earlier, Ukraine's ambassador to Germany Andriy Melnyk accused President Frank-Walter Steinmeier of maintaining close ties with Russia, calling it a "spider web contact with Moscow".

Frank-Walter Steinmeier was Germany's foreign minister from 2005 to 2009 and from 2013 to 2017. He has been President of the Federal Republic of Germany since 2017. During his tenure as minister, Steinmeier proposed granting special self-governance status to certain districts of Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions. This was called the "Steinmeier formula."