Ex-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder is in Moscow, as his wife confirmed to “Spiegel”. “Yes, that’s right,” said Soyeon Schröder-Kim when asked. As RTL/ntv reported on Monday, a reporter had previously met the ex-Chancellor in Moscow. Schröder said he was on vacation. Schröder-Kim now told the magazine: “He’s not on vacation, he’s having talks about energy policy in Moscow.”
RTL and ntv had reported that Schröder had stayed at a hotel in the city center of the Russian capital. When asked what he was doing there, the chancellor said verbatim: “I’m going on vacation here for a few days. Moscow is a beautiful city.”
According to the information, Schröder’s hotel is not far from the headquarters of the Russian oil company Rosneft. The former chancellor decided in May to give up his position on the supervisory board there and also declared that he would not accept an offered position on the supervisory board of the Russian gas company Gazprom.
According to the Russian news agency Interfax, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not rule out that Schröder could also get in touch with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The two politicians share a friendship. “As far as we know, yes, he is actually in Moscow,” Peskow said of the reports that the SPD politician was in the capital. “There are no meetings as such, but we do not rule out contact,” said the Kremlin spokesman. Recently there have been “less active” contacts between Putin and Schröder.
The ex-chancellor has been criticized for years for his ties to Russia and his close ties to Putin. He is accused of not having sufficiently distanced himself from Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
Schröder, against whom a procedure for expulsion from the SPD is ongoing, traveled to Moscow at the beginning of March and spoke to Putin about the Ukraine war. The former chancellor told the “Faz” in mid-July that Putin was definitely interested in a negotiated solution.
