Once Russia ends the conflict in Ukraine, it should be given a “chance to do business with Germany again,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Monday. He repeated, however, that Moscow must not, and will not, win. A Russian government that ends hostilities “needs a chance to restart economic cooperation, in another time when this is possible,” Scholz said in Berlin at a meeting of the Eastern Committee for German Business (OA—Ostausschuss), a trade association focused on relations with Eastern Europe. “Now is not that time.”
“At the moment, the relationships we have are being scaled back,” Scholz said, according to the weekly Zeit. The EU is “tightening the sanctions” now, but Russia will remain the largest country on the European continent after the conflict is resolved. “It is therefore very important that we make preparations for this time.”
Scholz described the current conflict as an attempt by President Vladimir Putin to re-create a Russian Empire that is destroying the country’s future instead, and accused Moscow of atrocities against Ukrainian civilians. Russia must not win “and Russia will not win, either,” he told the business group.
