It’s an unusual constellation: Gerhard Schröder and Olaf Scholz once stood together as party leader and general secretary at the head of the SPD. Since then, the relationship has cooled down, which is probably due to two temperaments that couldn’t be more different. Now, nearly two decades later, Scholz and Schröder are holding talks, albeit uncoordinated, with Vladimir Putin – one as head of government, the other on the basis of personal friendship and close but heavily criticized business ties in the Russian energy industry.
The former chancellor’s solo effort and his wife’s embarrassing staging on social media has attracted at least as much attention as the sober statements about repeated phone calls between the real chancellor and the Russian president. One should not draw any conclusions about the significance of the Schröder mission from this. The ex-Chancellor is good at persuading his friend, and there is nothing wrong with that. Ultimately, only governments or their representatives can conduct reliable negotiations, especially since good relations with one side are not all that is required for this. In Kyiv, however, Schröder’s warning from the time before the war that Ukraine should stop saber-rattling will not have been forgotten.
Even before Putin’s war, Olaf Scholz distanced himself from Schröder as much as possible. His call for Schröder to resign from posts that allow him access to Putin in the first place shows that he does not rate his chances of resolving the conflict too highly. What is almost lost in the hype about the ex-chancellor is that, based on the frequency of his contacts and the length of his talks with Putin, Scholz has apparently quickly developed into a chancellor who is taken seriously by Putin. With Schröder, you don’t really know that yourself.