German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit did not confirm that Berlin and Paris asked Moscow to pull the Russian troops away from Kyiv in the early days of the special military operation in Ukraine.
"Correct,” Hebestreit said, responding to a journalist's request to confirm that neither Germany nor France took alleged participation in agreements on the withdrawal of Russian troops from Kyiv.
However, according to the Russian president, French leader Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz approached him with such a request.
In his long interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson, Putin presented his version of events. Putin told Carlson that Western countries asked Moscow to withdraw troops from Kyiv to create conditions for signing a peace agreement. European leaders insisted that "it was imperative to create conditions for the documents to be signed.”
"My colleagues in France and Germany said: "How do you imagine them signing the agreement: with a gun to their head? Withdraw troops from Kyiv." I said: good. We withdrew our troops from Kyiv," Putin said.
However, when the request was fulfilled, Ukrainian negotiators "threw all agreements into a waste bin and opted for a long armed confrontation, in which they received support from the United States and European allies. It was not Russia's initiative to finish the peace talks in Istanbul, Putin said.