Gerhard Schröder led Germany’s center-left Social Democrats and served as chancellor from 1998 to 2005. Russian president Vladimir Putin recently named the former chancellor as a possible European mediator in talks aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, reviving debate about whether Schröder’s long-standing relationship with Moscow could be useful in negotiations.
During his time in office and afterward, Schröder fostered closer ties between Berlin and Moscow, most visibly through support for the Nord Stream gas pipeline projects. Other senior German figures, including Angela Merkel, Olaf Scholz and president Frank-Walter Steinmeier, also took roles in shaping Germany’s relationship with Russia, but Schröder’s post-chancellorship activities and continued public defense of Putin have set him apart.
After leaving the chancellorship, Schröder took on roles with Russian state-linked energy companies. He signed off on the first Nord Stream pipeline before leaving office and later associated with the venture behind Nord Stream 2, which was never completed after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Plans for him to join Gazprom’s supervisory board in 2022 were announced but then abandoned amid mounting criticism.
The invasion strained Schröder’s standing in Germany. His support for maintaining ties with Putin and his reluctance to condemn Russian actions harshly prompted proposals from within his own Social Democratic Party to remove him and led the Bundestag budget committee to strip him of a taxpayer-funded office and staff on the grounds that he no longer fulfilled obligations tied to his former role.
Schröder has been sharply criticized across the political spectrum. In 2022, prominent Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny accused Schröder of being in Putin’s pay, remarks that drew condemnation in Germany; Navalny later died in a Siberian prison in early 2024. Politicians from the Christian Democrats and the Greens demanded that Schröder relinquish any roles connected to Nord Stream 2 and sever other formal ties to Russian entities.
Despite the backlash, Schröder has defended his personal relationship with Putin and said it could be useful in seeking a negotiated end to the war. He has argued that the conflict cannot be resolved by the total defeat of one side and has described negotiation as perhaps the only realistic route to peace. In a 2024 interview he acknowledged that the Russian invasion violated international law but warned against demonizing Russia and urged a restart of energy imports that were cut after the outbreak of war.
Schröder has made trips to Moscow since 2022 to discuss possibilities for a ceasefire, moves that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and many in Germany found objectionable. Supporters of using returned diplomatic channels point to Schröder’s decades-long personal ties with Putin as a potential asset; critics say those ties compromise his credibility and make him unacceptable as a neutral mediator.
Whether Schröder could help broker a settlement therefore depends on several factors: whether both sides would accept a mediator with clear pro-Russian associations, whether his personal access to the Kremlin would translate into meaningful concessions, and whether Germany and other European partners could tolerate a role for a figure who has been widely condemned at home for his closeness to Putin. The proposal underscores the broader dilemma of using personal relationships and back channels to seek an end to a conflict that has deeply divided Europe.