German Chancellor Angela Merkel will travel to Moscow next Friday and visit Ukraine in two days, her spokeswoman said, without giving details of the trip.
Spokesman Steffen Seibert said details of her program and the reasons for the visits would be provided next week.
Merkel’s visit to Moscow on August 20 will take place just a few weeks before she leaves office after the September 26 elections in Germany.
It will also be her first visit to the Russian capital since January 2020.
Since then, relations between Germany and Russia have been severely exacerbated by a number of problems, including the build-up of Moscow’s troops on Ukraine’s borders, a series of spy scandals and the poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.