MOSCOW, September 27. /TASS/. German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul requested talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in New York in an effort to demonstrate diplomatic activity to the German public and shore up Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s falling approval ratings, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

"My assumption is that these talks, which they requested and which ultimately amounted to reading out a prepared text from a piece of paper, were needed solely to demonstrate to the German public some semblance of activity - and, of course, we put this in quotation marks - ‘by official Berlin on the diplomatic front,’" the diplomat said on the program Sunday Evening with Vladimir Solovyov.

"And all of this was needed to somehow, in some way, shore up Merz’s falling ratings," Zakharova stressed.