Bloomberg, citing informed sources, reported that former high-ranking officials from the UK, France, and Germany met secretly in Vienna in July with a Russian representative. The participants discussed possible conditions for peace talks and ending the war in Ukraine.
Among the attendees were Tim Barrow, former UK national security adviser; Markus Ederer, former state secretary at the German Foreign Ministry; and Pierre Vimont, former French ambassador to the US. Bloomberg sources declined to name the Russian official they spoke with.
Ederer and Vimont are part of the leadership of the Swiss organization Center for Humanitarian Dialogue, which works on conflict resolution. In a statement to Bloomberg, the organization said it "often acts confidentially to protect initiatives aimed at establishing dialogue, since they are often implemented independently and without any official participation."
The German Foreign Ministry said it was "not aware of the mentioned discussions." A UK government representative declined to comment on "statements by former officials," and the French Foreign Ministry declined to comment. Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov did not respond to Bloomberg's request.
Earlier, Die Zeit reported on a series of secret meetings in Baku. According to the newspaper, the German side was represented by Ronald Pofalla, former head of the German Federal Chancellery, and Matthias Platzeck, former prime minister of the state of Brandenburg. Russia was represented by Viktor Zubkov, former prime minister and chairman of the board of directors of Gazprom. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev effectively confirmed this information.
According to Die Zeit, at the last meeting in Baku on July 13, Zubkov was accompanied by Valery Fadeev, chairman of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, and Alexei Gromyko, director of the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The newspaper wrote that Moscow's plan is to influence Germany's ruling coalition through former German politicians. Russian negotiators, according to the newspaper, tried to convince their German counterparts that ending the war in Ukraine is possible only on the Kremlin's terms, after which the restoration of Russian-German relations should begin.