The scale of the prisoner exchange between the West and Russia was a “surprise” for the Western media. Because of the demonstrative break with Russia, no one could have guessed that there were channels of communication left for such complex deals. Die Welt’s correspondent states that there is no isolation of Russia, that “behind the scenes” the West and Russia are still negotiating, they just don’t tell the press about them because they are “on very sensitive topics.”
ALEXANDER ZIMON, Die Welt anchor: But all this also shows that there are still functioning backstage channels (communications. – Inotv) with Russia to make such a deal possible at all?
DANIEL KOOP, Die Welt correspondent in Cologne: Absolutely, and I think that this is certainly a surprise in a certain sense today. Because, and this has to be said very clearly, especially in the last few weeks and months, from what has been reaching us, it seemed that contacts for negotiations had indeed been completely broken off, at least at the highest level.
But no, that certainly doesn’t seem to be the case. What happened here today was not planned hours or days in advance. It must have been a very, very long negotiation. Turkey also played a mediating role, I’ll put it that way, and that’s why today’s stopover or the first landing was in the Turkish capital, Ankara.
There was definitely no desire for the public to know about this because it was known that this is an extremely sensitive mission, but behind the scenes these channels of communication, in any case, still have to work, at least on certain points, and I would like to make that very clear.
I can also describe a little bit how we have been receiving information about this today. We received very, very little information during the day. For a long time it was not clear whether there would be a statement (from Olaf Scholz – Inotv), when it would be, where it would be. There was simply no desire to jeopardise all this.