German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, on Thursday said he would meet his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in Moscow on a working visit, the German and Russian sides said.
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After the Moscow visit, Maas will travel to St. Petersburg to express respect for the victims of Nazi Germany’s blockade of the city during World War II, the German Foreign Office said.
Hundreds of thousands of people died during the more than two-year siege in 1941-1944, largely because of starvation.
According to the Germany’s Foreign Office, Maas’ St. Petersburg visit will be dedicated to the memory of the survivors and victims of the German blockade.
Germany and Russia have been strengthening economic ties, including the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, to double the capacity of an eponymous pipeline already in operation that carries Russian natural gas directly to Germany.
The U.S. has imposed sanctions on the construction of Nord Stream 2, alleging that the pipeline would increase Europe’s dependence on Russia for the commodity.
Russia claimed that the U.S. was simply seeking to maintain its costlier supplies to the European gas market.
Germany and Russia have also experienced tensions in their bilateral relations in recent months, with suspicions of Russian state involvement in 2015 hacking attack on German parliament and 2019 murder of an ethnic Chechen in a Berlin park.
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