When Putin needs to talk, he calls Merkel

BERLIN, Aug. 21 (UPI) -- When Russian President Vladimir Putin needs to call a world leader, he can reliably expect German Chancellor Angela Merkel to pick up the phone.

The German newspaper Die Welt, citing statistics from the Kremlin, said Thursday that Putin has made 120 calls to world leaders thus far this year -- compared to 59 in the same period in 2013 -- and 33 of them went to Merkel. French President Francois Hollande received 15.

Putin, growing increasingly isolated from G8 and other world leaders after Russia's annexation of Crimea and suspected support of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, clearly has some rapport with Merkel. He also speaks fluent German and worked, from 1985 to 1990, in the Soviet Union's KGB office in Dresden, in the former East Germany.

Of the calls Putin made to Merkel, 21 of 33 were in a bilateral format, instead of a group or conference call format. Only 10 bilateral calls between Putin and U.S. President Barack Obama were in the bilateral format, excluding the involvement of an interpreter.

Hot-line calls between Putin and Merkel peaked in March, when Crimea was annexed, and again in July, when a Malaysia Airlines aircraft was shot down over Ukraine.