Lavrov Says Russia Not Cutting Diplomatic Ties With Germany
19:47 GMT 10.12.2023 (Updated: 19:55 GMT 10.12.2023)
© Sputnik / Aleksey Nikolskyi
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MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Moscow was not "breaking off" diplomatic relations with Berlin, pointing to the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin accepted the credentials of a new German ambassador.
On Monday, Putin swore in 21 new ambassadors, including those of Germany, the United Kingdom, and Turkiye. During the Kremlin ceremony, the president stressed that the disrupted cooperation between Russia and Germany has not been beneficial to either Berlin or Moscow, adding that his country stood for equal cooperation.
"We are not breaking off any diplomatic relations. Russian President Vladimir Putin will receive the credentials from the German ambassador [Alexander Graf Lambsdorff] today. But we will tell them the truth," Lavrov told Rossiya 1 reporter Pavel Zarubin ahead of the ceremony.
In May, the German government announced that only one out of five Russian consulates in Germany would be allowed to operate, along with the Russian Embassy in Berlin. Germany also closed its own consulates in Kaliningrad, Yekaterinburg, and Novosibirsk, leaving the embassy in Moscow and the consulate in St. Petersburg in operation. The measure was taken in response to Moscow's decision to cap the number of German diplomatic mission employees in Russia, which was, in turn, a tit-for-tat move after Berlin expelled dozens of Russian diplomats in April.
9 December 2023, 16:17 GMT
