Austrian Chancellor Calls Face-to-Face Conversation With Putin “Difficult”

Austria’s Chancellor Karl Nehammer spoke more about his difficult face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” program, which aired this Sunday ( 16).

Nehammer was the first Western leader to sit down with Russia’s president since he launched his invasion in February.

Nehammer traveled to Moscow to confront Putin last week after seeing evidence of “war crimes” in Bucha, Ukraine, he said.

Nehammer told NBC’s Chuck Todd about his visit to Bucha outside Kiev: “We saw the war crimes there. And Orthodox priests told us that Russian soldiers shot civilians. And after the trip to Ukraine, I took a trip to Moscow to confront President Putin with what I saw.”

He described this conversation as “unfriendly” but “frank and harsh”.

“I told him what I saw. I saw war crimes. I saw the massive loss of the Russian army. And I told him that there is a need for humanitarian corridors for civilians like in Mariupol or Kharkiv, for example. Civilians need water and have to tend to the wounded there,” the chancellor said.

Nehammer also said that Putin said he would cooperate with an international investigation on the one hand, but that the Russian leader also said he did not trust the Western world.

Concern over further loss of life in the Donbass region

Nehammer added that he left his meeting with Putin very concerned about the impending battle for Donbass, which would see “many loss of human life”.

“You know we can all see that there is preparation for [uma] massive battle in the Donbass region. The Ukrainian side is prepared for that. The Russian is prepared for that. And we will see a lot of loss of human life there, on the one hand.”

But he also offered some hope because neither Ukraine nor Russia’s leaders have entirely ruled out “peace talks” or negotiations, the Austrian representative said.