Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer held “very direct, open and tough” talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday, in Putin’s first meeting with a European Union leader since the invasion of Ukraine started more than six weeks ago.
Neutral Austria, which obtains 80% of its natural gas from Russia, generally maintains closer ties to Moscow than much of the European Union but that has not been the case recently.
Nehammer has expressed solidarity with Ukraine and denounced apparent Russian war crimes, while his government has joined other EU countries in expelling Russian diplomats, albeit only a fraction of the large Russian diplomatic presence there.
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