All Putin’s men in the German SPD
Schroeder, Steinmeier, Gabriel, Voscherau, Struck, Platzech, Schwesig: these are Putin's friends in the SPD, the Social Democratic Party of Germany. The in-depth analysis by Andrea Greco and Giuseppe Oddo taken from their new book, “The gas weapon” (Feltrinelli)
According to the most critical observers, the presence of Steinmeier at the top of the state, due to his pro-Russian positions when he was Foreign Minister, would also make Scholz's change of direction less credible and Germany less reliable in the eyes of its allies.
In April 2022, Ukrainian authorities opposed the German president's trip to their country, saying he was unwelcome due to his close ties to the Kremlin. The incident was dismissed in October, when Steinmeier was able to travel to Kiev. The episode, however, shed light on his role in the policy of rapprochement between Berlin and Moscow: first as Schröder's head of cabinet when he was minister-president of Lower Saxony, then as his right-hand man and political advisor at the federal chancellery, then as leading exponent of the grand government coalition led by Merkel, in which Schröder imposed Steinmeier as head of Foreign Affairs.
LOBBYING FOR THE NORTH STREAM
Having retired from active political life, the former chancellor agreed to carry out lobbying work for Gazprom in favor of the Nord Stream project, having the certainty that the new Foreign Minister, whose mentor he had been, would give continuity to his political line foreign to Russia. The contract for the construction of the gas pipeline was signed nine days before the 2005 legislative elections, which anointed Merkel as the new head of government.
Even though Putin had already demonstrated his alienation from Western values - with the war in Chechnya, the assassination of Anna Politkovskaya, the restrictions on press freedom – Berlin nevertheless began very close cooperation with the Kremlin. When in 2007 the rotating presidency of the EU Council fell to Germany, Steinmeier took the opportunity to bring his "modernization partnership" project with Russia to the European level. Steinmeier believed that a link could be established between Russia and the West not only on the basis of economics, but also on that of common fundamental beliefs. He remained faithful to his ideas even after the annexation of Crimea, maintaining that dialogue with Putin should not be interrupted.
At the beginning of September 2015, the decision was made to lay Nord Stream 2 and the fact that Putin had meanwhile waged a war in Syria did not have the slightest weight for Germany. The point of greatest tension between Steinmeier and the United States was when in 2016 the then Foreign Minister accused NATO of being "warmongers" for its military maneuvers in Poland and the Baltic countries. Steinmeier considered it a mistake to inflame the political climate with threats of war against Russia. Again in 2021, the German president reiterated his support for Nord Stream 2, which he considered a "bridge" in relations between the two countries.
STEINMEIER'S RETHINKING, GABRIEL'S LINE
Steinmeier revised his positions only a week before his trip to Kiev, in October 2022, defining for the first time his attachment to the Nord Stream project as a mistake and the attempt to integrate Russia and the European Union in a security project as a failure common.
The same political line was followed without interruption by Sigmar Gabriel, president of the SPD between 2009 and 2017, Merkel's vice-chancellor for five years and Steinmeier's successor at Foreign Affairs after 2017. Gabriel made his mea culpas, on the support granted to Nord Stream and on the trust granted to Putin, only in June 2022. Today he presides over the Atlantik-Brücke (Atlantic Bridge) association which brings together 500 personalities from the political, economic, financial and scientific world in Berlin and is the main network of influence and cooperation between Germany and the United States.
ALL OF PUTIN'S (EX) FRIENDS IN THE SPD
Putin's (former) friends in German Social Democracy, more or less repentant of their past with the Kremlin, constitute a party within a party. For example, the former mayor of Hamburg Henning Voscherau is part of it, who in 2001 wanted to give Putin an honorary degree while the war in Chechnya claimed tens of thousands of civilian victims. Together with his brother Eggert – until 2014 president of the Supervisory Board of the chemical group BASF, shareholder of Nord Stream – “Henning Voscherau was a regular guest at Putin's summer residence in Sochi”.
The former Defense Minister Peter Struck (died in 2012), who chaired the SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag, theorized a policy of equidistance between America and Russia, and his same idea was shared by Martin Schulz, candidate for chancellor in 2017 and president of the Social Democratic Group in the European Parliament. Matthias Platzeck, former minister-president of the Land of Brandenburg and transition president of the SPD between 2004 and 2005, as head of the Russian-German Forum contributed to minimizing the autocratic tightening of Putin's regime and took sides against critics of the annexation of Crimea. Manuela Schwesig, re-elected in September 2021 as minister-president of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, once a young hope of the SPD, is now perceived as a burden in the party for her reckless positions in favor of Nord Stream 2, for whose realization she fought like no other German politician.
Shortly before the invasion, while Berlin was wondering about the strong deployment of Russian forces on the Ukrainian border, Schwesig was asking for the entry into service of the gas pipeline, which arrives in this region after a long journey across the Baltic and represents an important source of revenue for its budget. From documents published by the German press in April 2022, it emerged that a strange foundation for the climate and the environment is domiciled in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, which was established in 2021, with money from Gazprom, to covertly finance the completion of the submarine conduct, bypassing Western sanctions. The affair had serious political, administrative and judicial implications (due to the destruction of tax documents). The foundation, which Schwesig had promised to dissolve, remains open as this book goes to press.
In his activism in favor of Gazprom, Schwesig even ignored the indications of the Federal Chancellery which, in a document from September 2020, noted that there was "in principle, the possibility that demand for natural gas will decrease more sharply than originally planned and that Nord Stream is not absolutely necessary for the energy supply of Germany and Europe”. In the same document, two possible alternatives to Nord Stream 2 were put forward: the expansion of renewable energy, which would have to be accelerated to allow Germany to achieve its climate protection goals, and the diversification of gas imports from LNG terminals already existing in the European Union, as well as from North and South America, North Africa and the Caspian area. Schwesig had publicly ruled out both alternatives and categorically rejected imports of liquefied gas.
(Excerpt from “ The gas weapon ”, the new book by Andrea Greco and Giuseppe Oddo)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/energia/contatti-putin-spd/ on Sun, 08 Oct 2023 06:05:22 +0000.