German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier confirmed on Tuesday that he was not welcome in Kiev, where he’d intended to travel alongside four other EU presidents as a show of solidarity.
Ukrainian officials have accused Steinmeier of being close to Russia, while according to German media, his name is still associated in Kiev with the 2016 attempt to implement the Minsk agreements in the Donbass, known as the “Steinmeier formula.”
The president planned to visit Kiev on Wednesday alongside his counterparts from Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as “a strong signal of joint European solidarity with Ukraine,” but “that apparently wasn’t wanted in Kiev,” he told German media while visiting Warsaw on Tuesday.
While no official reason for the snub was forthcoming, the tabloid Bild reported Steinmeier was not welcome “because of his close ties with Russia,” citing Ukrainian government sources. The current German president was connected to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Russia as well as the “Steinmeier Formula”, the outlet pointed out.
Just last week, Ukrainian ambassador to Germany Andrey Melnik used an interview with the Tagesspiegel newspaper to accuse Steinmeier of not being serious about disavowing Russia, and named several other government officials in Berlin whom Kiev considered too close to Moscow. Poland’s deputy PM Jaroslaw Kaczynski joined Melnik’s criticism.