German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Tuesday after a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin that some aspects of Moscow's demands over Ukraine were worth considering.
"It was right that NATO and the European Union responded to the letters from Russia, and while Russia does not agree with the response, it is a good sign that it says there are a few good points in it," said Scholz at a joint news conference.
"Likewise, NATO, the EU, and we do not agree with the demands of Russia, but we believe there are some points in there that are worth discussing," he said, adding that an eastward expansion of NATO was not currently on the agenda.
Scholz said the word genocide, used by Putin at an earlier joint news conference, was strong. "It is wrong," he said.
Putin's statement stems from a heated verbal exchange with Scholz in the joint press conference after their meeting in the Kremlin.
Putin said that NATO had bombed Belgrade in the late 1990s without a UN Security Council mandate. Scholz reacted to this by saying that a genocide had been prevented at the time.
Putin countered that today there was a "genocide" in eastern Ukraine. At first, Scholz did not reply to this.
Russia sees itself as the protector of the Russian-speaking population in eastern Ukraine. According to UN estimates, more than 14,000 people have died in the conflict so far, most of them in the area controlled by pro-Russian separatists.
