Germany Finally Talks to Russia, Then Forgets What Diplomacy Is For

For years, European governments have insisted that Russia must change its behaviour before meaningful diplomacy can resume, yet when Germany finally sat down with Moscow at the United Nations, the encounter looked less like the beginning of a diplomatic opening and more like an attempt to deliver another European position directly to the Russian foreign minister. German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul met Sergey Lavrov in New York on 26 September 2026, in the first bilateral meeting between the German and Russian foreign ministers since before the war in Ukraine began, and the German side used the opportunity to call on Moscow to de-escalate and move toward negotiations. The meeting lasted roughly twenty minutes and was initiated by Germany, according to reporting from both sides.

There is nothing wrong with Germany talking to Russia; in fact, there is something rather strange about how long it took for the two countries to resume direct ministerial contact at all. Diplomacy is supposed to involve talking to governments with which you disagree, particularly governments with which you have serious disputes, because nobody needs diplomacy to talk to their friends and nobody needs a foreign minister to tell an ally what it already believes. Wadephul himself made this point essentially afterwards, saying that opponents are precisely the people with whom governments have to negotiate, but the problem is that Russia came away from the encounter saying it heard nothing new.

That is the fundamental weakness of European diplomacy at the moment: Europe keeps confusing speaking to Russia with negotiating with Russia. Those are not the same thing, because a negotiation requires two sides to listen, understand the other's interests, identify areas where concessions are possible, and determine what each side is prepared to offer in return. If one side spends the meeting repeating what the other side must do, then goes home announcing that it has engaged in diplomacy, the exercise may technically qualify as a meeting, but it is difficult to call it serious negotiation.

Lavrov's public response was blunt enough to expose the problem, because he said Wadephul had simply reiterated Germany's official position and questioned whether that should really be considered dialogue. He reportedly told reporters that Wadephul could effectively have called him and told him to read Germany's public statement, which is a fairly devastating description of a diplomatic meeting if accurate.

The German side, to be fair, did not simply walk into the room and demand that Russia surrender. Wadephul reportedly called for a ceasefire, negotiations, and practical steps concerning Black Sea grain exports, while also arguing that incidents Germany attributes to Russian hybrid activity would not change Berlin's support for Ukraine. Those are legitimate positions for a German foreign minister to articulate, and Germany is perfectly entitled to tell Russia what it believes Russia should do. The problem begins when European governments mistake the articulation of their demands for the actual practice of diplomacy.

The secrecy surrounding the encounter also deserves scrutiny, although it needs to be described carefully. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the German side had sought restrictions on media access, including restrictions concerning questions and recording of opening remarks, while other reporting indicates that the meeting itself took place without the kind of open media interaction normally associated with a major diplomatic encounter. There are legitimate reasons for private diplomatic conversations, but when a meeting is the first direct ministerial contact in years, the public should at least be able to understand what was actually discussed and what each side believes happened.

Then there is the Bucha episode, which illustrates an entirely different problem. Russian officials say Lavrov raised a Russian report challenging the established Western and Ukrainian account of the killings in Bucha, while Russian spokesperson Maria Zakharova claimed Wadephul covered the document with a notebook rather than engaging with it; these are Russian government claims and should not be treated as independent confirmation of what happened inside the room. The underlying Bucha allegations remain heavily contested by Moscow, Kyiv and Western governments, so the correct diplomatic response to competing claims should be examination of evidence rather than simply refusing to acknowledge that the other side has raised the issue.

This is precisely where European diplomacy needs to mature. If Russia presents evidence that European governments consider fraudulent, then examine it and explain exactly why it is fraudulent; if Russia presents a document containing demonstrably false claims, dismantle those claims with evidence; and if Moscow raises something uncomfortable but potentially legitimate, engage with it rather than pretending that the mere fact that Moscow said it makes the question disappear. Diplomacy is not an award for ideological purity, and listening to an adversary does not mean accepting the adversary's position.

The same principle applies in reverse, because Russia cannot reasonably expect European governments simply to accept every Russian account of events either. Moscow has its own interests, narratives and strategic objectives, and European governments have every right to challenge them, but serious diplomacy requires understanding what Russia actually wants and what it might be prepared to trade for an agreement. If the European position is that Russia must end the war, withdraw, accept Ukraine's sovereignty and change its behaviour before anything meaningful can happen, then European diplomats should also explain what Russia receives in return and what security architecture Europe is prepared to negotiate once those conditions are met.

Instead, too much of European foreign policy has become a collection of declarations containing words such as "must", "should", "cannot" and "will". Those words are useful in speeches, communiqués and parliamentary debates, but diplomacy begins when the speech ends and somebody has to sit across the table from the person who does not accept your terms. Power politics does not disappear because a European foreign minister has produced a morally confident statement, and Russia is certainly not going to change its strategic calculations merely because Berlin has explained that it should.

This is also why the idea that Russia is simply rejecting every possible negotiation needs more nuance. Moscow has rejected particular proposals and continues to maintain positions that Ukraine and its European supporters consider unacceptable, while Russia's own officials say negotiations remain possible under conditions Moscow considers appropriate; the fact that one meeting produced no breakthrough does not establish that Russia has rejected diplomacy in every form. Wadephul himself concluded after the meeting that Russia was not currently showing a constructive negotiating position, which is a narrower and more defensible claim than saying Russia has categorically refused negotiations.

But the broader European problem remains. If European governments genuinely believe that diplomacy is necessary to end the war, then they need to become much better at the actual mechanics of diplomacy, because diplomacy cannot consist indefinitely of publicly demanding that the other side change while refusing to seriously examine what motivates that side. Europe does not have to agree with Moscow, trust Moscow, or abandon Ukraine in order to understand Russian interests, and doing so would actually make European diplomacy more rather than less effective.

Germany is particularly important because it has enormous economic and political weight inside Europe and a long historical relationship with Russia, even though that relationship has deteriorated dramatically since 2022. Wadephul's decision to meet Lavrov therefore matters, but the significance of the meeting will not come from the photograph of the two men shaking hands or from the fact that German and Russian officials were finally sitting in the same room. It will come from whether Germany can move from issuing demands to identifying actual areas where negotiation is possible, and whether Moscow is prepared to do the same.

There is also a domestic political dimension that Berlin cannot ignore. The Alternative for Germany has increasingly argued for a different approach to Moscow and openly favours dialogue, while the Kremlin has welcomed the AfD's position, so German policymakers are operating in an environment where Russia policy is no longer merely a foreign-policy question but part of an increasingly contentious domestic political debate. That does not prove that Wadephul's meeting was motivated by pressure from the AfD, but it does demonstrate why Berlin has political incentives to show that diplomacy remains part of its toolkit rather than something permanently abandoned.

And this is where the wider European problem becomes visible, from Kaja Kallas and the EU foreign-policy establishment to national foreign ministers across the continent. European officials have become extremely good at issuing statements, announcing sanctions, demanding changes in Russian behaviour and describing the principles that Moscow must respect, but the harder task is creating channels through which those principles can actually be negotiated with an adversary that does not accept Europe's premises. Europe cannot claim to be conducting serious diplomacy if it spends most of its time talking about Russia rather than talking to Russia.

The United States and China are not perfect diplomatic actors, and neither should be romanticised as some master class in international relations, but both understand a basic principle that European governments would do well to remember: you do not negotiate because you like the other side; you negotiate because you need something from the other side or because the alternative is worse. Washington has repeatedly maintained channels with governments it publicly condemns, while Beijing routinely separates economic, security and political disputes sufficiently to preserve room for manoeuvre, and European governments need to recover some of that strategic flexibility without abandoning their principles.

The lesson from the Wadephul-Lavrov meeting should therefore not be that Germany was wrong to speak to Russia. Germany was right to talk to Russia, because refusing to communicate with an adversary is rarely a sophisticated long-term strategy, particularly when the stated objective is eventually to negotiate an end to a war. The lesson should instead be that opening a door is not the same as walking through it, and European diplomacy will remain ineffective if every attempt at dialogue is simply another opportunity to repeat the demands Europe has already been broadcasting publicly.

Russia may reject Germany's terms.

Germany may reject Russia's terms.

Ukraine may reject both.

That is what negotiation looks like before negotiation actually begins.

If Europe genuinely wants peace, it needs diplomats who can sit in a room with an adversary, listen to positions they find deeply objectionable, understand what the adversary is trying to achieve, identify the points where interests overlap, and then negotiate from there. Anything less is not diplomacy in its fullest sense; it is simply a press conference held across a table.

And if the Wadephul-Lavrov meeting is remembered for anything, it should be as a warning to Berlin and Brussels that talking to your opponent is only the first step. The real test is whether you can listen well enough to understand what would actually make the opponent move, and whether you are prepared to offer something meaningful in exchange for what you want.