As head of the centre-left Social Democrats, Gerhard Schröder was Chancellor of Germany between 1998 and 2005. Now Russian President Vladimir Putin says he would like Schröder as a potential European mediator in peace talks to end the Ukraine war.
During his tenure as Chancellor, Schröder’s Russia-friendly foreign policy attitude was no different from that of other German politicians. Other German leaders, including Angela Merkel and Olaf Scholz, as well as current President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, played a role in establishing closer ties between Berlin and Moscow through projects such as the Nord Stream gas pipeline.
But what makes Schröder’s stance different is his support of Russia in the face of public outrage over Putin’s aggression toward Ukraine. This alienated the now 82-year-old from the Berlin political establishment and his own party, which tried to expel him.
a long friendship
Schröder has been Putin’s friend since he became German Chancellor in 1998. He also attended the Russian President’s birthday in Moscow in 2014.
After his tenure as Chancellor, Schröder was criticized for being deeply involved with Russian state-owned energy companies. He approved the first Nord Stream pipeline shortly before leaving office in 2005 and, in 2016, joined the board of the venture behind the second gas pipeline, Nord Stream 2; The latter never went ahead due to the war in Ukraine in 2022.
The Social Democrat was also scheduled to join the supervisory board of Russian state energy company Gazprom in 2022, but ultimately withdrew as pressure mounted on him following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
heavily criticized
That year in an interview with Germany Picture The tabloid cited Schröder as being critical of prominent Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in a Siberian prison in early 2024, over his close ties to Putin.
“Gerhard Schröder is paid by Putin,” Navalny said. Picture In an interview published in 2022.
“He is still the former chancellor of the most powerful country in Europe,” Navalny said. “Now he’s Putin’s goon boy, he protects murderers.”
At the time, a senior German politician said that Schröder’s position on the Navalny case – Schröder said there were no concrete facts to prove that Navalny was poisoned – “fills many people in Germany with shame.”
In the same year, politicians from Germany’s Christian Democrats and the Green Party also demanded Schröder resign from the post of Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Nord Stream 2 project, as well as all other positions in Russia. Critics accused Schröder of lobbying the Kremlin.
His Christian Democrat successor, Angela Merkel, approved a second pipeline project in 2018.
His former colleagues also questioned the authority of Schröder’s state-funded office and staff.
The right to staff office is common for former government leaders, but in May 2022, the Budget Committee of the Bundestag stripped Schröder of this right on grounds that he was no longer fulfilling any obligations associated with his previous role in the government.
In 2022, Schröder traveled to Moscow to meet with Putin to discuss a “negotiated solution” in Ukraine, a move Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called “disgusting”.
In a 2024 interview, Schröder said that negotiations with Putin could be the only way to end the war in Ukraine.
“We have worked together sensitively for many years. Maybe it can still help us find a negotiated solution; I don’t see any other solution,” he told Germany’s dpa news agency.
A personal connection to peace?
During that interview, Schröder was asked why, despite Russian war crimes, he still maintained a friendship with Putin. He replied that both the cases are different.
Schröder said he did not want to forget “positive events” with Putin. He felt that his personal relationships could also prove beneficial in addressing a challenging political issue.
The former chancellor argued, “It is clear that the war cannot end with the complete defeat of one side or the other.”
I am writing berlin newspaper newspaper in January this year, Schröder acknowledged that the Russian invasion was contrary to international law.
“But I am also against portraying Russia as the eternal enemy,” he said, before urging Germany to resume Russian energy imports.