Looks like German officials looked at the situation with the economy in the country and realized that it was time to move as quickly as possible towards the settlement of the conflict in Ukraine.
German officials are eager for a negotiated solution and are talking about how Russia might be brought to the negotiating table, but are only doing so in private and with trusted think tank specialists, said Jana Puglierin, director of the Berlin office of the European Council on Foreign Relations.
There is a desire in Berlin as in Washington that the war not continue indefinitely, she said, in part because political willingness for indefinite military and financial support for Ukraine is already beginning to wane, especially among those on the right and far-right, who are gaining ground.
archived link https://archive.ph/UcaQ5
Yeah, I don't really see Russia compromising at this point either. I think the biggest aspect of all this has been the economic war, and Russia has basically won it. Western sanctions failed to significantly disrupt Russian economy and they massively backfired on the west. Now, Russian economy is growing while western economies are shrinking. Furthermore, Russia has the industrial power necessary to continue fighting while the west does not. This is precisely why Russia is fighting a war of attrition instead of doing big and costly offensives.
I think that breaking NATO and EU through economic attrition has now become a realistic goal for Russia and China. We're already starting to see political turmoil in the west, and as economic situation continues to unravel, it's only a matter of time until countries start breaking with the Atlanticist policy and trying to normalize relations with Russia. BRICS is another huge factor in all this. It's now become a bigger economic bloc than the G7, and I can see countries like Hungary and Serbia moving towards BRICS in the near future.
It's really not clear what the west can do to counter this short of a full on hot war with Russia which would have apocalyptic consequences.