German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said it is time to rekindle diplomatic efforts to end the war in Ukraine. But both foreign and domestic responses to his proposal have been rather muted. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has been trying to rekindle diplomatic efforts to end the war in Ukraine© Thomas Kierok/ZDF/dpa/picture alliance
In the halls of the Federal Chancellery in Berlin, it would appear the time for re-doubled diplomatic efforts to end the war in Ukraine has come.
In an interview with the German public broadcaster ZDF on Sunday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said: “I believe that now is the moment when we also need to discuss how we can get out of this situation of war faster than the current impression is.”
While he did not offer a concrete plan on how to achieve this, he did endorse Russia attending the next Ukraine peace summit in Switzerland.
Criticism from the opposition, support from the coalition
Germany’s conservative opposition sharply criticized the chancellor for his comments.
Roderich Kiesewetter, a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs with the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU), remarked that Scholz’s ideas were predictable, fitting a wider strategy from parts of his center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) to “very subtly push Ukraine into a sham peace determined by Russia, in which support is gradually reduced and sham negotiations are called for instead.”
Jürgen Hardt, foreign affairs spokesperson for the CDU in the German Bundestag, said that “one could do [Russian President Vladimir] Putin no greater favour than force Ukraine to negotiate while he carries on murdering in the Donbas region.”
While speaking with the German daily paper Berliner Zeitung, the conservative politician added that “we all want to see negotiations, but it’s up to the aggressor to put an end to the aggression.”
Experts say Scholz, seen here hosting a recovery conference for Ukraine’s war-ravaged economy, can no longer pose as a neutral arbiter between Ukraine and Russia© Ebrahim Noroozi/AP/picture alliance
The Greens, who are part of the governing coalition, have also responded somewhat sceptically to Scholz’s comments. Green co-chair and foreign policy expert Omid Nouripour told the German news agency DPA that the Kremlin had not shown any particular interest in “speaking on equal terms.” But he agreed that negotiations and peace summits needed to include Russia.
The business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP) also share power in the governing coalition and were similarly hesitant about Scholz’s remarks. Their foreign policy expert Ulrich Lechte told Berliner Zeitung that there was “certainly never too much diplomacy,” in his party’s eyes, but he did not expect Putin to be willing to negotiate with Ukraine and withdraw his troops.
“In my view, another phony peace as was last agreed upon in the Minsk II accords is completely unacceptable,” he added, ((referring to the failed peace protocol signed in Minsk in 2015 intended to end fighting in captured southeastern Ukrainian territory.))
German state elections and the war in Ukraine
Expert observers were not surprised by Scholz’s thoughts on bringing Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table. The SPD recently suffered “bitter” losses in state elections in east Germany’s Thuringia and Saxony, which could partially explain why he would make such comments now.
Another state election is scheduled in Brandenburg next week. Scholz’s fellow party member Dietmar Woidke is currently leading in polls in the eastern German state surrounding Berlin.
Alex Yusupov, who heads the Russia program of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a German political foundation affiliated with the SPD, believes that Scholz meant to back Woidke with his remarks and signal that Berlin was taking into consideration “that the war should be brought to an end better sooner than later — not just with military means but also with negotiations.”
Speaking with DW, the political scientist also noted that, had the chancellor failed to speak to Russia’s war in Ukraine, populist parties would have exploited the fact.
Ukrainian political scientist Volodymyr Fesenko believes Scholz is trying to strike a political balance: “He picked up on a trend,” the expert said. “Peace negotiations are currently being discussed avidly, and that’s why Scholz decided to speak to the matter, especially after just meeting [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy.”
Fesenko thinks that the chancellor will follow the political mood at home in the hopes of strengthening his position for next year’s federal elections. But the analyst also sees indications of Scholz highlighting new aspects of the issue.
“Scholz put it a little differently, but his comments didn’t contain anything concrete or sensational,” he said. Instead, Fesenko expects talk of peace deals to take off after the US presidential election in November.
Can Germany still influence Russia?
Ukraine’s former ambassador to Germany Andriy Melnyk recently told Berliner Zeitung he personally believed that Scholz should “get creative and use Germany’s established diplomatic channels to sound out whether talks with Putin made sense.”
But what does that mean in real terms? Yusupov says Germany cannot deliver weapons to Ukraine and still pretend to be a neutral intermediary in talks.
“Germany has lost all its influence on Russia,” he said. “The Kremlin does not see Berlin as an independent actor.” And since Germany stood firmly by Kyiv, Berlin would certainly not initiate another peace agreement like Minsk II, the expert added.
Meanwhile, Moscow’s response to Scholz’s attempts at rekindling diplomatic efforts has been muted. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has said that currently, there was no basis for peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. With an eye on the US, he added that “we are not hearing anything from the country that is steering this process, that is directing the collective West.”
What about Zelenskyy’s 10-point peace plan?
On Tuesday, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal assured reporters that Kyiv was eager to see a Russian representative attend the next summit, to “prevent manipulation by the Russian Federation and to demonstrate to all participants its ability or inability to negotiate peace.”
In July, Moscow had dismissed joining the summit, stating that Russia would “not accept any ultimatum” that followed the “formula” laid out by Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy.
Meanwhile, the head of the Ukrainian Presidential office Andriy Yermak has noted on Telegram that the only way to justice lay “exclusively [in] the Ukrainian ‘peace formula,’ norms of international law, territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine.”