Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will visit Berlin on Tuesday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced, in a trip kept secret until shortly before it takes place.
Merz disclosed the visit while speaking at a business conference in Berlin. Referring to Zelenskiy’s visit to the White House last year, he said: “He’ll be here with me just after midday, and things will be a bit different then.”
Visits by the Ukrainian president to Germany are routinely kept secret until shortly before they occur and take place under the highest security precautions, reflecting the risks of wartime travel by a head of state whose country has been at war since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Germany has become Ukraine’s largest supporter in its defence against that invasion, and Berlin is therefore a central stop in Kyiv’s diplomacy. The Berlin visit follows Zelenskiy’s trip to Turkey at the weekend, where he held talks he described as important, as part of a push to move towards a negotiating format in November.
Kyiv has said it hopes a trilateral meeting between peace negotiators from Ukraine, Russia and the United States could take place in Abu Dhabi between 6 and 10 November, and that it wants Europe involved in talks on how to end the war. No agenda for the Berlin meeting has been published, and no joint statement has yet been issued, so what the two leaders agree in Berlin — rather than the fact of the visit itself — will determine its significance.
The visit also comes as Ukraine heads into another winter of war, with Russian strikes continuing to target its energy infrastructure and Kyiv pressing its allies to replenish air defences and sustain military support. That context gives the Berlin talks a practical urgency beyond the diplomatic calendar: for Ukraine, continued German backing is a question of keeping the lights on as well as keeping negotiations alive.
Note: the featured image is a file photo of the Federal Chancellery building in Berlin, taken in 2016, not a photograph of Tuesday’s visit.
Sources: Reuters, “Ukraine’s Zelenskiy to visit Berlin on Tuesday, Germany’s Merz says”, 3 November 2026, https://www.reuters.com/world/ukraines-zelenskiy-visit-berlin-tuesday-germanys-merz-says-2026-11-03/
