by Ewald König

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Donald Trump is 78 years old, Vladimir Putin 72. Both grew up in a time when there were real telephones. Anyone who expected the latest phone call between the two to be a video call or a Zoom meeting is mistaken. They didn't even have AirPods in their ears, the wireless headphones that are an integral part of their grandchild generation. The two have also disdained smartphones. No, they were on the phone like they used to, they had real handsets in their hands, handsets with cable lines so that they had to sit at a desk and couldn't go up and down in the office, as people like to do during longer calls. However, I think their devices no longer had dials, but buttons.

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They actually spoke to each other - and didn't just leave important messages on voicemail, as CDU leader Friedrich Merz did. It also seems certain that the two of them were on the line in person and that the line was not hijacked by resourceful cabaret artists or voice impersonators pretending to be the president. It's all happened before. And they apparently got through straight away, unlike the Germans who call a public authority or a company and fester on hold until they finally give up. So much for the established facts.

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But what did Trump and Putin discuss? What did they agree on? Their respective explanations after the phone call were completely contradictory. Policy analysts quickly discovered that Trump had been ripped off the table, as expected. There are even various messages about the length of the conversation. They vary from one hour to two and a half hours. Some have also assumed that Putin deliberately kept his counterpart waiting again, as he likes to do during state visits.

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So what did they talk about? ‘Nothing really,’ says Boris Pistorius. Mind you: Pistorius, the Minister of Defence. Not Olaf Scholz, the incumbent Federal Chancellor. He did not comment on the phone call. He has a lot of experience of how to earn scorn when Putin is on the long line. Just like all other heads of state and heads of government who had previously tried to bring Putin to his senses, Scholz also failed. He had to listen to serious reproaches for this. Because Putin is tough as nails. And he enjoys being able to show how he is by no means isolated, as the others seek contact with him and not the other way round. Putin also enjoys the way Western players seek attention in the Kremlin as if in a race.

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He also enjoys how Europe does not speak to him with one voice, but every exponent himself. EU foreign and security policy with one voice — that was once planned, and there would also be plenty of staff for it, but it is not taking place. Although Henry Kissinger lived to be a hundred years old, he never received an answer to his most famous question: “Who do I call if I want to talk to Europe? ”

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And Putin should enjoy something else: No sooner have the two of them hung up the phone than he sent drones onto the Ukrainian infrastructure again. He did this even after previous phone calls with Western callers. By the way, right after Olaf Scholz's phone call last November, when he rained bombs on Ukraine. He also made no exception with Angela Merkel. And as early as 2014, immediately before the annexation of Crimea, French President Emmanuel Macron had to listen in a telephone conversation with Moscow that reports of an imminent attack by Russia on Ukraine were “provocative speculation.”

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I am always in favour of keeping channels of conversation open. Even with Moscow. But attempts at telephone diplomacy have not proved successful. They are helpless presentations of diplomacy. Looking back, we will only be able to judge whether they were not even worth the telephone charges.

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