What actually happens when Olaf Scholz calls Vladimir Putin, for example? Are the conversations recorded? The answer is, well, rather sketchy.
From
Boris Herrmann and Georg Ismar
The nicest thing about the rather icy phone calls with Vladimir Putin is said to be the always extremely friendly interpreter, who sits on the line in Moscow. When the chancellor talks to the Russian president about the war, a number of listeners sit with Olaf Scholz in the room, including foreign policy adviser Jens Plötner and government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit. After that, Hebestreit always shares a few general sentences about the content, and the public doesn’t learn much more about the phone calls.