(Reuters) – An adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, Serhiy Leshchenko, denied in an interview with CNN that Zelenskiy had rejected a visit offer from German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, as reported by the Bild newspaper.
Steinmeier said on Tuesday that he had planned to visit Kyiv with his Polish counterpart and the presidents of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia “to send a strong signal of European solidarity with Ukraine … (but) that was not wanted in Kyiv”.
Bild reported that Zelenskiy had rejected Steinmeier’s plans to visit due to his close relations with Russia in recent years and his years of support for the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, a project designed to double the flow of Russian gas direct to Germany but which has since been cancelled.
(Reporting by Max Hunder; Writing by Alexander Winning; Editing by Jon Boyle)
