On May 9, following the parade in Moscow, Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin told reporters that, in his opinion, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder is the best candidate to lead negotiations between the European Union and Russia. The Russian dictator emphasized that, in principle, he is willing to meet with any leader who “hasn’t said anything nasty” about Moscow. However, Schröder is the most suitable and appealing candidate for the Kremlin.
This statement immediately sent shockwaves through European and, to some extent, Ukrainian politics. In Europe, Schröder’s candidacy was immediately and categorically rejected—this politician’s reputation in the EU is quite controversial. In Ukraine, however, there was significantly less discussion of the matter, mainly because many people no longer remember or do not even know who he is.
So who is he—Gerhard Schröder? How is he remembered by Germans and Europe as a whole? How and why did he become a symbol of Russian lobbying in Europe, and why can Schröder be considered a sort of “German Medvedchuk”?
UA.News looked into the matter. Read more in our article.
Early Years: From a Poor Salesman to a Lawyer
Gerhard Fritz Kurt Schröder was born on April 7, 1944, in the small village of Mossenberg-Weren, located in what is now the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. The future politician’s childhood was difficult. His father, Fritz Schröder, was drafted into the Wehrmacht back in 1940. He died in October 1944 in Romania, never having seen his son. The only thing little Gerhard had left of his father was a photograph of him in military uniform, which he later always kept on his desk.
His mother raised their two sons on her own, working hard on the farm. When Gerhard turned 14, he was forced to leave school and take a job as a shop clerk to help his family survive the difficult postwar years.
Despite financial difficulties, the young man never gave up on his dream of higher education as a way to escape poverty. He later enrolled in the law school at the University of Göttingen, which he successfully completed in 1976, earning his law degree. After college, Schröder practiced law in private practice in Hanover until 1990.
Schröder’s Political Journey: From Left-Wing Activist to Chancellor of Germany
Schröder’s political career began early. From a young age, he showed an interest in public life. In 1963, he became an activist in the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). In 1978, he was elected head of the party’s youth wing, and by 1980, he had been elected to the Bundestag for the first time. Early in his career, Schröder, like many Germans at the time, sympathized with the far-left communist wing of the SPD, but his views gradually became more centrist, democratic, and pragmatic.
In 1990, Schröder became head of the state government of Lower Saxony, where he served for eight years, establishing himself as a highly effective administrator. It was this position that served as a springboard to the top. In 1998, he won the federal election and became the seventh Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, succeeding the “unsinkable” Helmut Kohl, who had ruled the country for over 16 years.
Schröder’s Chancellorship: Reforms, Iraq, and Early Sympathies for Moscow
As chancellor, Schröder was remembered for his ambitious reforms. His most famous domestic policy project—Agenda 2010—was a set of measures aimed at liberalizing the labor market and systematically modernizing the social security system.
The reforms were not particularly pleasant and were even painful for many Germans (as, indeed, almost any reforms are), but it was precisely these reforms that laid the foundation for transforming Germany from the “sick man of Europe” into an economic powerhouse and, at the same time, a deeply social welfare state. Germany remains renowned to this day for its social benefits and its focus on the individual.
On the international stage, Schröder is remembered above all for his pacifism. In particular, he publicly refused to support the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, which led to a serious diplomatic crisis and a deterioration in relations with Washington. On this issue, Germany presented a united front with France and Russia, which became one of the first signs of Schröder’s rapprochement with Putin.
Today, Germans’ views on the former chancellor are polarized. While he enjoyed stable and fairly high support in the early 2000s, his approval rating has plummeted in recent years due to his openly pro-Russian stance.
In 2022, the city of Hanover even stripped him of his honorary citizenship, and the soccer club “Hannover 96” suspended Schröder’s honorary membership. He is called an “unwelcome pub patron,” a reference to the 82-year-old former chancellor’s alcohol problems, and his former allies are pointedly distancing themselves due to the overall toxicity of Gerhard Schröder’s public image.
From an ambitious chancellor to the “German Medvedchuk”
The repeated comparison of Schröder to Viktor Medvedchuk in our article is no coincidence. In the Ukrainian context, Medvedchuk is a unique politician who for years positioned himself as a “bridge” between Moscow and Kyiv, but in reality was a conduit for purely Russian interests. Gerhard Schröder played a very similar role in Germany for a long time.
Schröder’s friendship with Vladimir Putin began almost immediately after the latter came to power in 1999. Throughout Schröder’s chancellorship, they regularly referred to each other as “friends,” and this rhetoric only intensified over time. In particular, the German chancellor and the Russian president frequently went to the sauna together, attended each other’s birthday parties, and so on.
However, the true—financial—nature of this relationship became apparent after Schröder’s political career ended. In 2005, just a few weeks (!) after stepping down as chancellor, he became chairman of the board of Nord Stream AG—the company responsible for building the Nord Stream gas pipeline. Incidentally, it was Schröder himself who approved this project while still serving as chancellor. Later, he became chairman of the board of directors of the Russian oil company Rosneft and a member of the board of another Russian state corporation—Gazprom.
This was a classic “sinecure” scheme—essentially a kind of “honorary pension” in Russia. The Kremlin periodically offered former top European politicians positions in Russian energy companies that were generally completely meaningless yet very highly paid, thereby turning them into lobbyists for its interests. Schröder left his positions at Gazprom and Rosneft only in 2022—after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And even then, he did so reluctantly, under very serious public pressure.
Schröder on Ukraine and the War
After the start of full-scale Russian aggression in 2022, Schröder never condemned the Kremlin’s actions, not even rhetorically. Although he acknowledged that the invasion “violates international law,” he added that he opposes “the demonization of Russia as an eternal enemy.” The former chancellor, who once took a firm pacifist stance and protested the U.S. invasion of Iraq, has repeatedly criticized sanctions, called on Europe to resume imports of Russian energy resources, and generally promoted the idea that economic pressure on Moscow harms the West itself.
Interestingly, in 2022, Schröder had already attempted to act as an informal negotiator. At that time, he flew to Moscow to meet with Putin and discuss the possibility of a settlement in Ukraine, but this initiative came to nothing: for some reason, the Russian leader did not listen to his “friend.” Later, the former chancellor stated that “the Americans prevented a compromise from being reached.”
It is telling that when Putin again proposed Schröder as a mediator in May 2026, the former chancellor’s office declined to comment. At the same time, Ukraine, Germany, and many other countries immediately opposed the idea.
In particular, the head of European diplomacy, Kaja Kallas, stated that Schröder “was a high-ranking lobbyist for Russian state-owned companies,” and therefore “would be sitting on both sides of the table” during negotiations. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sibiga emphasized that “we definitely do not support such a candidate.” The Ukrainian ambassador to Germany also added that Schröder’s long-standing promotion of the Kremlin’s interests “deprives him of the moral right to act as a mediator.”
In summary, the question arises: is Gerhard Schröder suitable as a negotiator with the Kremlin? And the answer here is actually not as clear-cut as it seems.
Gerhard Schröder is a man who rose from a poor boy in a small German village to become the leader of Europe’s most influential state. However, his subsequent trajectory has turned the politician into a toxic figure in the eyes of a significant portion of German society and the majority of European politicians. The metaphor of the “German Medvedchuk” describes his role with surprising accuracy.
Can Schröder be an effective negotiator between the EU and Moscow? On the one hand, he does indeed have direct access to Putin and the Kremlin’s personal trust. In diplomacy, this is sometimes far more important than any formal status or authority.
If the negotiations truly lead to de-escalation and help end the war and save millions of lives, then the identity of the mediator plays no role at all—the outcome, not the individual, must be the main focus of the process.
However, an analysis of Schröder’s entire biography, career, connections, and public statements shows that he has almost never demonstrated the neutrality so essential for the role of mediator. He has always acted far more as an advocate for Russian interests than as an honest and impartial mediator. Given this, the prospect of Schröder’s success as a negotiator looks frankly doubtful.
