GERMANY PERSPECTIVE

Berlin hears two things in the sequence: a Putin who talks "compromise" while keeping the 2022 territorial conditions, and a Friedrich Merz whose name has begun to circulate as a possible negotiator. ZEIT Online headlines on a Putin "ready for compromise but firm on the old war aims" and lays out the core trade: Moscow is willing to adopt Trump's deal vocabulary on condition that the occupied territories are locked in. FAZ documents in parallel the symbolic choreography of the St. Petersburg Forum, where Putin addresses a hand-picked group of international news agencies. The salient point for the German press: it is the Czech prime minister Babiš who publicly suggested Merz as Europe's negotiator — a Polish-inflected suggestion echoed in Prague that is not innocuous. Germany had chosen in March 2026 to resume negotiations with Putin through the Paris-Berlin-London track; seeing Merz's name mentioned as a sole pilot is both a symbolic promotion and a domestic political bomb — the ruling coalition has not settled the exact perimeter of acceptable territorial concessions. The German coverage therefore avoids any celebration: it registers the diplomatic opening without committing, recalls that Putin gave up nothing on substance, and watches Merz the way a feline watches a cage that has just been opened without warning. For Berlin, publicly accepting the pilot role would break with the discretion doctrine adopted since 2022 — the coalition weighs political costs before diplomatic benefits.