As the news magazine “Politico” reports, former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder is said to be in Moscow as a mediator and to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin. According to insiders, this is part of mediation efforts to end the war in Ukraine. According to this, the Ukrainian government is said to have asked Schröder to mediate and Schröder was initially in Istanbul and met with a Ukrainian representative who is part of the delegation for talks on a conflict resolution with Russia.
In Turkey, the foreign ministers of Ukraine and Russia also initially unsuccessfully negotiated a ceasefire and escape corridors on Thursday – it was the highest-ranking meeting to date.
According to information from the Tagesspiegel, neither the SPD leadership nor the federal government was privy to a possible Schröder mission. “No information, no consultation,” said government circles.
There was initially no confirmation of Schröder’s alleged meeting with Putin, and it was also completely unclear what this mission could bring. So far, there is no sign of the Russian side giving in. Despite diplomatic attempts, the bombing continues, including against civilian facilities in the Ukraine. The capital, Kyiv, is preparing for a major attack.
Switzerland, Istanbul, Moscow: The stations of the alleged Schröder mission
“Ukraine wants to see if Schröder can build a bridge for dialogue with Putin,” one of the sources told Politico, according to the unconfirmed report. Earlier, the Ambassador of Ukraine in Germany, Andriy Melnyk, suggested Schröder as a mediator. Contact with Schröder is said to have been made through the Swiss Ringier publishing house, for which Schröder had worked as a consultant.
He then flew to Istanbul with his wife on Monday. The member of the Ukrainian parliament, Rustem Umerov, informed him that President Volodymyr Zelenskyj was counting on his relations with Putin to at least achieve a ceasefire.
Schröder said he wasn’t sure if Putin would receive him in Moscow, but he would try. “The Ukrainians gave Schroeder indications on several important issues they would be willing to negotiate, including Ukraine’s NATO aspirations, the status of Crimea and the future of the Donbass region, which Russia had recognized as independent just days before its invasion “, reported the portal “Politico”.
A plane from Moscow?
After the meeting, on the way to Schröder Airport, Schröder contacted a person close to Putin and reported on the conversation. He asked if Putin would meet him. “Ten minutes later, Schröder was given the green light, but was scheduled to wait in Istanbul until Wednesday for a Russian plane to pick him up,” the report reads.
[Alle aktuellen Nachrichten zum russischen Angriff auf die Ukraine bekommen Sie mit der Tagesspiegel-App live auf ihr Handy. Hier für Apple- und Android-Geräte herunterladen.]
Schröder is the head of the supervisory board at the Russian state energy company Rosneft and also has management positions in the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipeline projects. Because of his closeness to Putin, the former Chancellor (1998 – 2005) had lost more and more support, especially in the SPD .
Schröder’s fifth wife, the South Korean So-yeon Schröder-Kim, had brought the former chancellor into play as a peace mediator shortly before the start of the war. “Many have contacted me to ask whether my husband could talk to Mr. Putin about the Ukraine crisis. That would only work if the federal government wanted it seriously. But that is not to be expected,” Schröder’s wife wrote in an Instagram post.
After the beginning of the war he could hardly be reached even by SPD politicians and was already referred to as the “ghost of Hanover”. Because he refused to the last to give up his supervisory board mandates after Putin’s attack on Ukraine and because he is also supposed to join the supervisory board of the Gazprom group in June, the SPD has distanced itself from him. He faces expulsion from the party.
The SPD chairmen Saskia Esken and Lars Klingbeil as well as eight former SPD leaders recently issued a joint letter asking the former Chancellor to distance himself from Kremlin boss Vladimir Putin. “Act and speak clear words,” the letter reads. In view of the war in Ukraine, it is now a question of “unmistakably opposing President Putin’s warlike actions”. He himself decides whether he wants to remain a respected social democrat in the future. If Schröder does not make a public statement, one will express oneself “in this sense”.
Before that, he had already lost all the employees of his Bundestag office, including his long-time office manager and colleague Albrecht Funk. Schröder accused Ukraine of “saber rattling” at the end of January. And repeatedly stressed that all sides had made mistakes and that Putin would not attack Ukraine.
[Alle aktuellen Entwicklungen im Ukraine-Krieg können Sie hier in unserem Newsblog verfolgen.]
Schröder connects – as he puts it – a friendship with Putin. In 2004 he classified him as a “flawless Democrat”. Schröder and his then-wife Doris Schröder-Köpf visited Putin again and again. For Schröder’s 60th birthday, Russian President Putin brought a Cossack choir to Hanover. And the Schröder couple were allowed to adopt two Russian children.
More about the war in Ukraine at Tagesspiegel Plus:
When the Ukraine was invaded in February, Schröder wrote in his only statement on the LinkedIn network: “The war and the associated suffering for the people of Ukraine must be ended as soon as possible”. That is the responsibility of the Russian government, Schröder wrote without naming Putin.
In recent years, “mistakes and omissions in the relationship between the West and Russia” have often been discussed. “And there were many mistakes – on both sides,” he wrote, as if to put Putin’s attack into perspective. “But Russia’s security interests do not justify the use of military means either.”
During the visit of Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) a week before Putin’s war order, Russian President Schröder praised the Germans beyond measure for thanking him for the long period of low gas prices. Scholz only coolly commented that he “did not want to comment further on the private-sector activities of a former politician. He does not speak for the Federal Republic of Germany, but for himself.”
Schröder opened all doors for Putin in the Chancellorship and afterwards to increase the gas billions with new pipelines through the Baltic Sea. Also thanks to the German payments, the Russian military was put in the position it is in today.
Today, however, it turns out to be a mistake and a misconception on the part of Germany’s Russia policy and the SPD that Putin was able to be hemmed in by gas deals and that Nord Stream will be a purely private-sector project. Schröder had driven this forward, and under Angela Merkel the project of another Baltic Sea pipeline, Nord Stream 2, which has now been stopped, was pushed ahead.
