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FDP foreign policy expert Alexander Graf Lambsdorff
Photograph:
IMAGO/Political-Moments
Germany is allowed to send Alexander Graf Lambsdorff as ambassador to Moscow. The FDP foreign policy expert has been traded for the office for some time. As a spokesman for the Foreign Office announced, the Russian government has now given its permission for the appointment, the so-called Agrément.
Accordingly, the 56-year-old member of the Bundestag and diplomat will take up his new office "this summer". Graf Lambsdorff replaces Géza Andreas von Geyr, who has represented Germany in Russia since September 2019. Von Geyr is now to become Germany's ambassador to NATO in Brussels.
Lambsdorff is considered one of the most experienced foreign policy experts in the traffic light coalition, not least because of his previous knowledge of the Foreign Office. From 1995 onwards he was trained as a diplomat, and in 1997/1998 he was a member of the planning staff at the Federal Foreign Office under the then FDP Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel.
From 2000 to 2003, Lambsdorff was also an employee at the German Embassy in Washington, then temporarily country officer for Russia at the Federal Foreign Office. He was a Member of the European Parliament from 2004 to 2017 and its Vice-President from 2014 to 2017. Lambsdorff has been a member of the Bundestag since 2017 and is deputy chairman of the FDP parliamentary group.
At least since the beginning of the Ukraine war, the ambassadorial post in Moscow has been considered one of the most difficult. Lambsdorff has sharply condemned the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine on several occasions.
asc/Reuters