Olaf Scholz, the Deceiver

In the past three years German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his Social Democrats have actively undermined Ukraine’s survival efforts. They now run their election 'peace campaign' on Ukraine's back.

Dear Reader,

German Chancellor Scholz struggles hard to cope with the fallout of the break-up of his coalition government. With his public support rates down spiralling, he and his Social Democratic Party (SPD) have started to campaign on the ‘Peace with Russia’ ticket. Scholz had never more than lukewarm feelings for Ukraine. He continues to defend the SPD’s traditional view that European security cannot be organised in opposition to Moscow.

Zeitenwende – Much ado about very little

Since the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion, I have been arguing that the German government’s Zeitenwende is nothing but a public relations stunt, orchestrated in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’ solidarity with Ukrainians is lukewarm at best, and his Social Democratic party mates remain on an appeasement course with Russia. Whatever the Muscovite regime has been doing to Ukrainians, and whichever red lines Moscow has been crossing in Europe in the past years, the Scholz-troops stick to their conviction that it is impossible to organize European security against but only with Russia. They bear considerable responsibility that the Kremlin’s influence on the German public and political discourse has steadily grown.

In my book ‘Sehenden Auges - Mut zum strategischen Kurswechsel’ (https://www.dtv.de/buch/sehenden-auges-28329) I dedicate several chapters to the sad story of Germany’s Russia policy in the past two decades, which was full of strategic blindness, complacency and murky comradery with Russian oligarchs and senior policymakers.

Driven by national economic, financial and trade interests, a deeply rooted Ostpolitik-nostalgia, a heavy dose of anti-Americanism and a strict aversion to military power, Germany’s Social Democrats have long remained in denial of the evolving strategic realities in Europe and beyond. This has not changed.

‘The Schröder boys’

For years and years, Germany’s Social Democrats chose to ignore President Putin’s increasing authoritarianism at home and his aggressive military expansionism abroad. Neither Russia’s invasion in Georgia in 2008 nor its military intervention in the Syrian conflict 2015 nor its illegal landgrab of Ukrainian territories in 2014 led them to abandon their close ties to Moscow. Often, former Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) is blamed for protecting Berlin’s special relationship to Moscow, and rightly so. But it was the SPD leadership that undertook great efforts to cultivate tight relations to the Putin regime. Meanwhile, all this is splendidly documented. (https://www.chbeck.de/bingener-wehner-moskau-connection/product/34619113). Markus Wehner and Reinhard Bingener, two German journalists, have meticulously analyzed the complex web of personal relationships between Russia’s governing caste and German political and economic decisionmakers.

It is not difficult to figure out that Gerhard Schröder is the central driving force. 20 years ago, then-German Chancellor and close Putin friend, Schröder nurtured and expanded the ‘Moscow Connection’ systematically across Germany’s political and economic circles. Today, it is amazing to see how resilient and influential the network still is. Almost three years after the Russian regime unleashed the largest conventional war in Europe after World War II, I, the ‘Moscow Connection’ is kicking and alive. For a while ‘Gas Gerhard’ had to take political cover; but thanks to the new SPD General Secretary, Matthias Miersch, another leftist veteran of Schröder’s power base in Lower-Saxony, his rehabilitation is well underway.

But Gerhard Schröder is not the only top SPD figure who continues to defend the Berlin-Moscow axis. While other SPD grandees, for example, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier or former Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, publicly admitted that they misperceived Russia, their short statements of regret were never credible. For more than 10 years Steinmeier played a crucial role in fostering close political and economic relations between Berlin and Moscow. As foreign minister, he arrogantly dismissed the concerns about the Kremlin’s growing aggression that the three Baltic countries and Poland voiced and chose to overlook Russia’s use of military coercion against its neighbors.

Russia’s merciless terror against Ukraine, its nuclear threats and hybrid attacks on NATO and EU members have not prompted any kind of self-critical reflection process among the Social Democrats. Why admitting that their judgment on Moscow’s bellicose ambitions was a fatal mistake? Most SPD members keep their heads low, hoping to outwait Russia’s terror machinery in Ukraine. Those Social Democrats who fought particularly hard and long for the North Stream 2 project and for lifting EU sanctions against Moscow like Manuela Schwesig, Head of Government of the northern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, still remain in power. Thanks to Olaf and the influential ‘Schröder Boys’-network.

German red lines

For a moment I hoped that Berlin’s policy bubble would wake-up on 24 February 2022. But it did not. Indeed, the Scholz-government joined the international chorus of outcry but only to turn around and limit Ukraine’s self-defense options and capabilities.

Delivering Taurus missiles to Ukraine? Nope. Lifting national caveats to help Ukrainians strike military targets in Russia? No. Sending Eurofighters to help protect Ukrainian skies? Certainly not. Sending Western military trainers to Ukraine? No way. Considering a NATO air defence cover for parts of Ukraine? Out of question. The SPD leadership took months to agree on the delivery of 18 (sic!) German battle tanks to Ukrainians. While it is true that members of the Green and Liberal Party made stronger pitches in support of Ukraine in public, Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock from the Green Party as well as Finance Minister Christian Lindner from the Free Democratic Party (FDP) did not challenge the Scholz’ course. Other issues were more important than Ukraine.

Since the early stages of Russia’s war against Ukraine Olaf Scholz’ ‘escalation management’ has been aimed to ensure that Russia does not suffer a military defeat in Ukraine. It is simply impossible for him and his SPD to imagine European security without Putin’s empire. Subsequently, Scholz has imposed multiple rigid red lines on his government’s handling of Russia’s war against Ukraine, stressing his unwillingness to divert from his ‘cautious approach’:

Germany must not become a party to the war. NATO must not become a party to the war. The Kremlin must not be provoked. The Ukrainian Armed Forces must not be armed to exercise any kind of forward self-defense. The various loopholes in the Western sanction regime must not be addressed; and, most importantly, Ukraine must not come even close to NATO membership.

For the Scholz-troops, the official Western mantra ‘Standing with Ukraine as long as it takes’ leaves sufficient room for maneuvering. Behind the Chancellor’s frequent explanation that his ‘cautious escalation management’ is only geared to protect Germans from any harm stands his firm belief that a Ukrainian victory over the Russia aggressor could eventually trigger the collapse of the Putin regime - a scenario that, in his view, must be avoided at all costs. SPD members are adamant that the Russian Federation must not fall apart. The risks, they say, would be enormous and incalculable. Ukraine’s self-defense, therefore, should not pose any existential threat to the Putin regime.

Scholz - the military expert

Scholz who was a committed socialist throughout the 1980s and maintained close ties to the former GDR leadership during the time leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall never participated in any form of basic military training. He lacks any knowledge and understanding about military and defense-related matters, which may explain why he continues to ridicule Ukraine backers who have been pressing his government for more robust and faster military aid to Kyiv as ‘caliber experts’ and ‘war mongers’.

Wolfgang Schmidt, Chief of the Berlin Chancellery and one of his closest aids, shares the distaste for military issues. Defending Scholz’ refusal to greenlight German Leopard battle tanks for Ukraine, he claimed that those arguing in support of German tanks suffered from a ‘V-2 syndrome’: “There is no Nazi-Wunderwaffe for Ukraine”, was Schmidt’s arrogant rebuttal. His views were echoed Jörg Nürnberger, SPD back bencher, who, during a plenary session of the Bundestag, compared Kyiv’s requests for German Taurus missiles ‘to nasty children who always want another toy”.

The SPD’s fig leave support for Ukraine

Keeping Russia’s war against Ukraine far away from German domestic politics, framing it primarily as Russian-Ukraine conflict, purposedly blurring the lines between the victim and aggressor, hiding behind U.S. President Biden’s non-confrontational policy towards Russia, and making regular noise about the urgent need to return to ‘peace’ have been the prime elements of the SPD’s Ukraine policy.

With very few exceptions ordinary SPD parliamentarians avoid Russia’s war against Ukraine at all costs. They can neither score points with their electorates at home nor make tactical gains in their proper local party bubble. Talking about dying and wounded Ukrainians on the battlefield, Ukrainian cities in need of more air defences, or deported and tortured Ukrainians in the occupied territories are not considered winning themes. By contrast, SPD TV talks show guests like Ralf Stegner, who spent his long party career in local politics, like to issue dramatic warnings about the ‘escalation spiral’ and call for the return to peace negotiations and even arms control dialogue with Russia. “Military armament (for Ukraine) cannot be the solution for peace”, so Stegner, (https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/interview-mit-ralf-stegner-spd-zu-friedensdemo-dlf-4fec9b5f-100.html).

Absolutely typical of SPD lawmakers is that they completely ignore the fact that President Putin remains visibly unwilling to negotiate and, unimpressed by the West’s weak reaction, pursues his terrorizing campaign against Ukraine without a blinker. Central SPD messages like ‘We stand for peace diplomacy’, ‘We are the party of peace politics’ or ‘Peace cannot be achieved without dialogue with Russia’ are bizarrely disconnected from the brute reality in Ukraine and Russia’s hybrid attacks on NATO member countries. But SPD members are a disciplined gang in the Bundestag. Under the strict leadership of Rolf Mützenich, a long-time veteran of the party’s powerful left wing, they do not dare to challenge the Chancellor’s official line.

Berlin – strategically braindead

Hoping to normalize relations to Moscow at some point in the future, the Scholz coalition government never intended to work on a long-term strategy to constrain and contain Russia’s toxic expansionism in Europe and spell out any clear strategic end state for Ukraine. In NATO, Scholz blocks any meaningful discussion about a robust containment strategy and fast entry talks with Kyiv. Instead, public accountant Scholz prefers to refer to statistical numbers, paddling his own shoulder when claiming that Germany is Ukraine's second-largest supporter. This, however, is only true in terms of the German governments’ official pledges to provide military, humanitarian and financial aid to Ukraine. The existing data does not say a word how much of the pledged aid arrives in Ukraine. Bottom line is that Berlin’s support for Ukraine amounts to 0,381 % of its GDP. It ranks on place 15 on the list of bilateral support for Ukraine; far behind countries like Denmark, the three Baltic countries, Poland, Sweden and Finland. (https://www.ifw-kiel.de/de/themendossiers/krieg-gegen-die-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/). And bottom line, too, is that the Scholz-government decided to cut aid for Ukraine in 2025 by almost 50%. At the same time Moscow fully activates military, technological and even human support from its close allies in China, Iran and North Korea to subjugate Ukraine and future U.S. aid for Ukraine is most uncertain, the government of the largest European economy decides to drastically reduce its commitments for Ukraine.

Regarding Germany’s national defense budget and the NATO target of two percent, too, the Scholz-government does not hesitate to play generously with numbers. The claim that Germany has met the NATO two-percent ruand will continue to do so in the future rests on creative number games: the government included pensions, expenses for real estate and even interest rates from other federal ministries in its calculation of German defense expenditures. After decades of military downsizing, German military spending remains woefully inadequate to meet the new strategic challenges posed by Russia—as both a recent report by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy and the new Kiel Military Procurement Tracker show (https://www.ifw-kiel.de/de/publikationen/aktuelles/kriegstuechtig-in-jahrzehnten-deutschland-ruestet-viel-zu-langsam-gegen-russische-bedrohung-auf/). The economic analysts conclude that the combination of the cumbersome national procurement system and notorious lack of financial resources would take Germany as much as a century to bring its military inventory up to the level of 20 years ago; not really good news for its NATO allies.

Olaf, the Peace Chancellor

Thus far, supporting Ukrainian defence efforts too late, too reluctantly and with too little, refusing to draw clear red lines to the aggressive and kleptocratic Putin regime and blocking any possible move to bring Ukraine closer to accession talks with NATO have characterized Berlin’s Ukraine policy.

Alas, already prior to the break-up of the traffic light coalition on 5 November 2024, Scholz and the ‘Schröder boys’-network decided to make the war in Ukraine a key election campaign theme. The millions of German recipients of social welfare should and would not suffer because of Ukraine, Scholz promises to his voters. He would fight for a ‘swifter path to peace’.

The Social Democrats’ ‘peace campaign’ was long prepared and finally ready for take-off in the run-up to state elections in Sachsen, Thüringen and Brandenburg in September 2024. Faced with down spiralling public support (6-7%), the SPD’s only hope was to win back those East German voters who sympathize either with the right-extremist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) or the populist left-wing ‘Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht’ (BSW). Both parties openly support the Kremlin’s narrative, describe Ukraine as a corrupt country, and demand that German aid for Ukraine be immediately stopped, and peace negotiations be started. Meanwhile the SPD, CDU and BSW have agreed on a coalition in Thüringen, which calls for the lifting of EU sanctions against Russia and dismisses any plans to deploy U.S. missiles on East Germany.

Make no mistake: the German Chancellor’s ‘peace concept’ has nothing in common with Ukrainian President Zelensky’s ‘Peace Formula’, let alone proposed ‘Victory Plan’. In fact, the two concepts could not be further apart. The path towards ‘peace’, according to SPD members, can only start by accepting the presence of Russian troops in the five illegally annexed Ukrainian territories. Ukrainians, they argue, will have to be pushed towards accepting a future without them and placing their NATO membership bid on ice. Unsurprisingly, notions of a ‘Land for Peace’ or a ‘Minsk 3’- deal have been populating SPD corners for some time.

This, apparently, is not just empty talk. Long-time members of the ‘Moscow Connection’ are said to have travelled to Moscow and Baku to sound out potential peace options with President Putin’s envoys. This is what Matthias Platzeck (SPD) and Ronald Pofalla (CDU) seem to have done a good dozen times since spring of this year. Platzeck is a former Prime Minister of Brandenburg, a vocal and long-time admirer of Putin and Chairman of the German-Russia Forum. Pofalla held several key posts in the Merkel government before he became Chairman of the Petersberger Dialog, another German-Russia format under Berlin’s official patronage to ‘foster mutual understanding’. After Russia’s full-scale invasion into Ukraine, both clubs suspended its respective activities. This did not, however, prevent them from maintaining close ties to the Russian establishment. Seemingly, Platzeck, Pofalla and their supporters in the SPD could not care less about the fact that their covert talks with the Kremlin betray Ukrainian self-defence efforts and damage Germany’s already weak reputation among its allies.

In this regard, appointing the former NATO Secretary and former Norwegian Prime Minister and long-term Social Democratic friend Jens Stoltenberg as Chairman of the Munich Security Conference (MSC) has been a fitting move by Scholz. The MSC resides over a large international and influential network which, steered by the Chancellery, is far more than the usual big crowd conference that takes place in Munich every year. With a prominent and respected figure as Stoltenberg at its helmet, its multiple backdoor diplomacy avenues would be ideal to pave the way for the creation of a ‘Contact Group, an idea long advocated by the SPD leadership, to give Germany a prominent place at any future negotiating table. And, of course, such MSC-launched initiative would be part of a dedicated ‘Olaf Scholz peace initiative’.

Facing the Trump-Musk Tandem

For Scholz and his SPD, Donald Trump’s return to the White House comes with dark clouds hanging over future U.S.-German trade relations and Germany’s close economic ties to China. Chancellor Scholz seems also aware that the new administration in Washington to bound to exert hard pressure on his defence spending. But there is also a favourable aspect. Since the U.S. President-elect is determined to ‘end the war’ within 24 hours, a Trump-Putin deal would be the perfect solution for the SPD leadership to re-reestablish relations to the Putin regime.

The German election campaign is now in full swing. Strangely enough, Scholz and his SPD confidants believe that despite his grand unpopularity, he has a realistic chance for re-election. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius enjoys by far higher popularity rates and is judged to have better chances as the SPD’s top candidate in the federal elections on 23 February 2025. But Pistorius publicly declined. Throughout this political career he has been a loyal servant to the SPD leadership and Chancellor Scholz. Before moving to Berlin, he spent most of his time as Minister the cabinet of Stephan Weil (SPD), Prime Minister of Lower-Saxony, and an active member of the ‘Schröder boys’-network. There should be little doubt that Pistorius will not challenge the Social Democrats ‘peace campaign’ on the backs of Ukrainians.

In the past three years Scholz has actively undermined Ukraine’s survival efforts. He has also demonstrated a deep unwillingness to enhance Germany’s national military posture and to put any meaningful defense concept in motion to guard against Russia’s increased hybrid attacks on German soil. More profoundly, Scholz and his SPD troops are trapped in their own ideological straitjacket: they genuinely think that they can manage the expansionist mafia regime in Moscow and its active supporters in China, North Korea, Iran and elsewhere. Together, they have proven incapable and unwilling to grasp the magnitude of the challenge that Europe faces. Germans deserve much better political leaders, and Ukrainians a much more trustworthy, dedicated and courageous supporter.