With the speech by the Russian President, the German attempt to work towards a diplomatic solution to the crisis seems to have failed for the time being. The pressure on politicians in Berlin to take a clearer stance towards Moscow has continued to mount.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Tuesday last week.
The speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, in which he announced the recognition of the “People’s Republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk and the dispatch of a “peacekeeping mission” there, caught Berlin’s politicians by surprise must stay in touch with Russia and seek a diplomatic solution.
Representatives of other Western countries had made similar statements, but in the case of German politicians it was always more than just empty phrases when they emphasized the value of their “dialogue channels” to Moscow: In Berlin, people thought that the Kremlin would be more listened to than the Americans, for example and the British, and also as a reason for Germany not supplying arms to Ukraine, the alleged special relationship had to be used again and again.
So far, the SPD and the Union have lacked clarity
In fact, last week German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was the last Western head of government to be received by Putin; Observers had previously pinned some hopes on Scholz’s visit, but in the end the chancellor failed, as Putin’s angry speech on Monday evening showed. Some of what German politicians have said in the last few weeks and months now seems very naive.
The latest developments are embarrassing not only for the parties on the left and right, which have always been particularly pro-Russian, but also for some representatives of the Social Democrats, Germany’s largest governing party. Although the SPD has gradually moved towards a clearer position in recent weeks, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has not wanted to announce an end to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in the event of a Russian attack in the past few days either get through The pressure on him to finally do this increased again on Monday.
So far, however, the Union, the largest opposition force in the Bundestag, has also failed to take a clear stance towards Moscow. When it comes to the Ukraine crisis, Friedrich Merz, the head of the Christian Democrats, has been particularly notable for wanting to categorically rule out Russia’s exclusion from the Swift bank payment system. Markus Söder, on the other hand, the Bavarian Prime Minister and head of the Christian Social Party, has defended Nord Stream 2 at least as enthusiastically as many SPD politicians. It remains to be seen whether Merz and Söder will now move away from their positions.
Former Chancellor Schröder remains a problem for the SPD
Markus Blume, the Secretary General of the CSU, tried on Twitter on Monday evening to pass the buck to the Social Democrats by demanding that they should finally “break away” from the former Chancellor and current gas lobbyist Gerhard Schröder. Schröder is expected to join the supervisory board of the Russian energy group Gazprom in the summer; If he does not back down from this intention, the pressure on the Social Democrats to expel him from the party is likely to increase further.
On Tuesday, politicians from both the SPD and the Union called for rapid and significant sanctions against Russia; The chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Bundestag, the Social Democrat Michael Roth, was a little more specific and said that the measures had to “affect the oligarchic system, the people who became rich with Putin”. It is important that the European Union decide on a package of sanctions quickly and behind closed doors.