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Talks in New York as Kyiv buries its dead
Summary
A look back at the diplomatic and military developments around 26 September 2026, when Berlin and Moscow spoke for the first time since the invasion.
What did it mean that German and Russian diplomats sat down together on 26 September 2026, a day after Russian strikes killed seven people in Kyiv? The two events were not formally linked, but they framed the same moment.
Talks at the General Assembly
On 26 September 2026, on the sidelines of the eighty-first session of the United Nations General Assembly, German foreign minister Johann Wadephul met his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov. As reported at the time, these were the first talks between Germany and Russia since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The meeting marked a change in the pattern of contact between the two governments. It did not, on the evidence of the reporting, come with any announced shift in policy.
The strikes that preceded them
The previous day, 25 September 2026, Russian drone and missile strikes hit residential buildings and other civilian sites in Kyiv. Seven people were killed, including a 14-year-old boy, and 46 others were injured.
Kyiv, a city of around 2,950,000 residents, has been frequently targeted by Russian forces during the war. The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has said the Russian military exposed civilians to unnecessary and disproportionate harm. By 2026, the UN had documented about 16,000 civilian deaths, with estimates of up to 40,000.
A parallel track in Croatia
Germany featured in a third development. On 24 September 2026, a Croatian court approved the extradition to Germany of Ukrainian national Volodymyr Zhuravlov, over his alleged involvement in sabotaging the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines in 2022. The ruling concerned an allegation, and nothing in it settled the question of guilt.
Reading the days together
Taken together, the three items show Germany engaged on several fronts within three days: opening a channel to Moscow, pursuing a legal case linked to the pipelines, and watching the continued bombardment of a capital city. The talks came while civilians were still being killed in Kyiv, which is the sharpest contrast of the period.
What the talks produced is not something the reporting of 26 September 2026 establishes. What can be said is that a line of direct ministerial contact, absent since 2022, was reopened at the UN, and that it was reopened in the shadow of the previous day's casualties.
