Many western politicians, with Schröder and Berlusconi at the head enthusiastically joined in this strategy. They were not that concerned with Ukraine but the growing alliance with the Russian führer was in their eyes, the start of a new reality in which they and their countries would play a leading role.

A slap in the face and the final straw

Not all, however, succumbed all that easily to the charms of Putin, especially at the start of his Kremlin career when he experienced such a high level of social inferiority next to western politicians. He tried to make friends during the first years, with British prime minister Tony Blair. Both visited each other often. Putin flew to London for his first presidential visit. He suffered the jibes of the British tabloid press, who pleaded with their Russian guest not to steal bath robes from hotel rooms.

Blair was taken, as was Schröder, with the byzantine style of governance. The premier did not criticise the conduct of Russia’s brutal war in Chechnya and publicly praised Putin as a ‘democrat’. Any mutual respect evaporated though , with the American invasion of Iraq. Putin just couldn’t understand why Britain supported the Americans and participated in the war. From then on, Russo-British relations deteriorated.

Putin also wanted to befriend George Bush Jr., then starting his first term of office in the White House. According to Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar, Putin assembled a dossier on Bush before their first meeting. Amongst other things he found out that the American president was highly religious. During their meeting, he showed Bush an aluminium crucifix allegedly a present form his mother who saved him from a fire at the family dacha near Saint Petersburg. ‘ This convinced me that miracles do happen’, Putin is reported as saying which left Bush with a genuine delight.

Putin was under the impression that these gestures would build lasting relations with western politicians which would permit him to advance his policy effectively. One idea was the entry of Russia into the NATO alliance. This would enable him to take control of the organisation, or at least weaken it. He was left wondering why Russia, at the behest of the Americans, could not simply join up; there were procedures that required the unanimity of the members. He treated this as an affront, a slap in the face, although his friend Silvio Berlusconi did what he could to support the entry of Russia to NATO. To this end and on the Italian premier’s initiative, the joint Russia-NATO Council was established in 2002.

A further snub was the Iraq invasion. The Americans declined to seek Russian approval as Putin had thought. Further bitterness was stoked by the expansion of NATO into the Baltics in 2004 and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. Putin felt that America was not treating him as a partner and wanted to get rid of him by initiating resistance movements against him. Protests on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow in 2011 and on the Maidan in Ukraine two years later just confirmed his suspicions.

Other European politicians took a different line, such as the then French president Jacques Chirac, not to mention Schröder or Berlusconi. The trio condemned the American attack on Iraq which stoked up interest and sympathy in the Kremlin. The alliance was cultivated and lasted without further damage up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Schröder in slippers

Gerhard Schröder exhibited the greatest enthusiasm out of the three. He saw a chance for himself and Germany from the alliance. The main element would be a common energy policy.

Schröder piloted the Nord Stream project himself before he lost power, but oversaw its successful completion. Politicians from his party social democratic, the SPD, his close colleagues, supported him with slogans that stressed building a common Europe with, not against Russia. German businesses saw a huge market to the east with opportunities for gigantic profits (but the scale of these was doubtful at best).
br> Berlusconi fared worse, whose love of the trappings of luxury of power and quickly found a common language with Putin. They visited each other privately. Putin holidayed on Sardinia, and Berlusconi stayed in the Kremlin which was a rare privilege indeed by Russian standards. Their intimacy had a family character too. The daughters of Putin, Maria and Katerina befriended Berlusconi’s daughter Barbara.

Silvio Berlusconi was able to get business done during his visits. ENI the Italian energy concern bought Russian gas at reduced rates. ENI also participated in the division of the spoils after the fall of Yukos, the company owned by the imprisoned Mikhail Khordokhovsky.

The logical conclusion of these interests was to have been the construction of the gas pipeline to Italy and France from Russian through the Balkans. After the Orange Revolution, Russia started to blackmail Ukraine by shutting down gas supply. This in turn would have meant a fall in supply to Austria and Hungary. Enthusiasm for the new pipeline fell as a result.

Putin misjudged the situation and not for the first time either. He was convinced that he could lay the fault lay at Ukraine’s feet. This would lead to Europe pressurising for an alternative pipeline. This didn’t happen. The idea of a southern branch of the pipeline from Russia was rejected, officially on account its high costs but unofficially that Moscow’s gas strategy was beginning to increase disquiet.

The fiasco of the endeavours of Berlusconi, who lost power soon after Schröder, did not lead to Moscow giving up. On the contrary, the setback was understood as a failure by Moscow that it was not pressing hard enough on the West. The Kremlin started to corrupt western politicians more intensively. The aim was simple: in return for well-paid sinecures in Russian energy and raw material concerns, they had to use their positions and contacts to lobby for the Kremlin in their respective countries.

Schröder became the example to follow. He went to serve Putin without any restraint. Putin himself treated the German social democrat rather like a gadget or pet in front of other politicians. There’s an anecdote that relates how during summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Russian president invited leaders to his personal vineyard and the German chancellor appeared not by accident either in slippers holding a bottle of wine. Putin allegedly organised a similar scene at the Petersburg Economic Forum.

Others followed Gerhard Schröder’s example in time. The network of Putin’s agents started to expand and enveloped many high-ranking former politicians. The former French premier François Fillon landed a directorship at petrochemical companies, Sibur and Zarubezhneft. Also involved in the oil business was the former Austrian foreign minister Karin Kneissl who even invited Putin to her wedding in 2018. His wedding present was a position in Lukoil. Toby Gati, a former highly placed intelligence and political analyst at the US Department of State also held a position in this private Russian concern.

More corrupt politicians in Russian pay could be found in Britain; conservative Gregory Baker, a former energy minister in David Cameron’s government and Joan MacNaughton formerly Margaret Thatcher’s associate. Ekso Tapani Aho a former Finnish prime minister also figured on the payroll as an employee of Sbierbank as well as officials form the US , France, Indi and Latvia.

In 2005 , Putin tried to corrupt former US energy secretary Donald Evans whom he tried to offer the post of director at Rosneft. This individual was not picked by accident as he was a school friend of George Bush Jr. Evans’ presence in the Internationale of corruption could have had an impact on th e neutralisation of American energy policy. Evans rejected the job offer leaving the Kremlin to concentrate its efforts on Europe.

Sign of weakness

Meanwhile in Europe, the spirit of reset lived on. America, under its new president Barack Obama now that Dmitri Medvedev had temporarily at least taken over the presidency. This was a formality that arose from the constitutional limit of the president to two terms. Putin had served his allotted time and would have to wait for four years. But as prime minister, he could pull the strings from a distance.

At this time, Russo-Western relations were under pressure. In 2005, after the expansion of NATO eastwards onto the Baltics, Putin stated ‘ the fall of the USSR was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe’ hinting his intention to reverse the effects of the situation. During the Munich Security Conference two years later, he openly stated that Europe was seeing the creation of two opposing blocs those of Russia and NATO. In 2008, he attacked Georgia, bringing the situation to its most confrontational phase in his premiership.

Obama’s decision to repair relations was taken by Putin as a sign of weakness. Following Obama’s lead were western politicians with Angela Merkel at the head. A short period of détente was to follow. Putin exploited this skilfully, intensifying his energy policy guaranteeing billions in funding for armaments. Europe and Angela Merkel in particular wanted to believe in achieving an understanding with Russia. America with its focus on the Pacific, did not disabuse them of these daydreams.

Nord Stream 2 was initiated at this point. The transit capacity for this second Baltic pipeline would be so great that cutting off Ukraine would not have affected gas supply to Europe. As Nord Stream was preliminary to the gas conquest of Europe, the second pipeline was to be its culmination, and the death sentence for Ukraine.

There was a question as to if the Germans participate. Gerhard Schröder was left to sort out the matter. The social democrat was put in the position of chairman of the Nord Stream AG consortium, a Swiss registered company that belonged to the Russian Gazprom, (51 percent), and 49 percent to German companies E.ON and Wintershall (forming part of BASF). They held minority holdings in French company Engie and Dutch company Gasunie. At Schröder’s side sat former Stasi agent Mattias Warnig, invited to Nord Stream AG from his position as the chief of the Russian branch of Dresdner Bank. Warnig knew Putin from the 1990s. Both security agents knew each other form their time in Saint Petersburg when Putin was deputy mayor and Warnig was setting up a branch of the German bank. The Russso-German team stood to lobby intensively for the further European dependency on Moscow.

At the centre of the Russian web

Their actions were effective. In order to persuade Germans to build the new pipeline, the new climate policy was supported which assumed an exit from fossil fuels and atomic energy in favour of renewables and, surpirse surprise, gas. It was also assumed that gas would give way to the more ecological hydrogen, also supplied by Russia. The suicide note was signed by Germany when at the beginning of the year it switched off half of its nuclear power plants.

It is only now coming to light, after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, of the earlier financing of the German green organisations, serving the gas interests of Russia. Russia had also financed anti-war movements in the West, opposed to the presence of American nuclear weapons in Europe, so as to threaten NATO security too.

Schröder’s lobbyists were active in Belgium and Holland and in business and political circles. Germany to this end was created as a vision of an energy hub thanks the supply of Russian gas to the entire continent of Europe. The first plan were ambitious. Gas was to flow from Germany to Belgium and Holland, thence to Britain, as well as to Sweden and Finland. Connections already existed with central and Eastern Europe, including Poland, supplies to which were due for delivery on the ‘reverse’ principle. Germany was not only to profit form the deal but, together with Russia, would politically dominate the region. He who has energy would rule!

Gerhard Schröder did not act alone. According to Deutsche Welle the centre of Russian influence was Mecklenburg- Western Pomerania, site of the terminals of Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2. The prime minister of this region, Manuel Scheswig fom the SPD maintains close contact with Mattias Warnig and its finance minister Heiko Geue was a speech writer for Schröder. A ‘Russian Day’ is organised there annually . Politicians from Mecklenburg also sit on many lobbying institutions such as the Nord Stream Climate and Environmental Protection Foundation of Mecklenburg- Western Pomerania or the German-Russian Partnership. At the head of Nord Stream 2 sister company Gas for Europe, was Dieter Haller, director of the office of Gerhard Schröder when the latter was in power. The late Wolffgang Clement , a West German economics minister belonged to Schröder’s sinne circle. He founded the Wismar Eastern Institute that dealt with legal and economic relations with Russia.

The Frankfuter Allegemeine Zeitung summed up thus ‘ Schröder fulfilled the role of being the centre of Russia’s network of influence in Germany’. A deal with Russia was very attractive for Berlin. It could mollify Russian expansionism and maybe Germany would dictate the rules of the game in Europe. The catastrophic results were seen in the annexation of Crimea in 2014.Germany together with France took the lead in the so-called Minsk Negotiations, which was to end the conflict with Ukraine. The absence of the Americans, beside the fact that President Obama showed no interest, led to a years-long inconclusive situation that enabled Moscow to play off Berlin and Paris and that directly led to the current war in Ukraine. Angel Merkel , together with her French colleagues failed to stand up to Russia. This is far from surprising since Germany had been dependent on Russian gas and raw materials for a long time. Putin’s corrupt policy was beginnining to bear fruit.

The final stage

It was left to Donald Trump to criticise Germany’s Russian policy. He stated that the gas billions financed directly Russian armaments directly. The Americans imposed sanctions on the construction of Nord Stream 2 that prevented its completion and seriously complicated American-German relations.

Joe Biden adopted a different policy. In the face of a rising conflict with China, he counted at least at the start, of an understanding with Russia. American sanctions were initially withdrawn. But he pipeline itself, filled with a ‘technical’ gas was not stalled because of problems with its certification. An impatient Putin had ordered supplies to be curtailed thus initiating a crisis on the markets. But the Kremlin had misjudged the situation yet again. The pipeline was not activated and Russian credibility as a business partner began to be obvious to the most enthusiastic supporter of cooperation with Moscow.

The final stage of this game started after the invasion of Ukraine. When it dawned that this was not going to be as swift a victory as Putin had hoped, his corrupt structure lay in ruins. Heads started to roll. No one, apart from the marooned Schröder, rewarded with a directorship in Rosneft for his ‘services’, wanted to ahave anything to do with the fanatical dictator in the Kremlin. No one had any qualms of conscience either as it was all done to save their skins as the heat rose.

Intimate relations with Moscow had proved tragic and the guilty fled like rats.

– Konrad Kołodziejski
– Translated by Jan Darasz

The author holds a doctorate in social science and is a commentator.