Putin hellbent on forging stronger relationship with EU, via Germany

Angela Merkel’s predecessor, former German chancellor Gerhard Schroder. Picture: AP

The Germans have a word for it: Mannerfreundschaft. Four times married and divorced, Gerhard Schroder has based his political and business career on bonding with people he sees as fellow alpha males. The most enduring of the former German chancellor’s buddies is Russian President Vladimir Putin. It was the Kremlin chief who sent barrel-chested Don Cossacks to Hanover to sing at Schroder’s birthday, who reportedly accelerated his adoption of two Russian orphans and who offered him a lucrative job running the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project shortly after he had been kicked out of office by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. That’s quite a friendship.

Now Schroder is about to join the board of the Russian oil giant Rosneft, on which the US imposed sanctions this year. It is run by Igor Sechin, a hard-boiled operator said to have strong ties to the security services and to be Putin’s closest ally. Schroder, in other words, is being welcomed into the Kremlin court. The move represents more than jobs for the boys; this very personal axis is supposed to guarantee heightened Russian influence within the EU at a time when Putin is losing faith with the Trump administration.

Russian energy policy used to be about forging strategic links with states such as Germany, France and Italy, beating off commercial competition and using gas in particular as political leverage over smaller states in central Europe and the Balkans. Today, though, the picture is more confused and for Putin, who will soon announce his intention to stand again for the presidency of Russia, worrying. International sanctions are hurting. The oil price is still very low, with Brent crude at $US53 a barrel, and big players such as Saudi Arabia are scrambling to diversify into other forms of energy. The Frankfurt motor show this week will see German carmakers clinging on to the age of diesel but the writing is on the wall and Russia is nervous.

As for Gazprom, the Russian gas producer, it retains a 34 per cent share in the EU energy market but is facing a hostile European Commission that has made security of supply a priority. Liquefied natural gas from the US, which is just starting to arrive in Poland and The Netherlands, may not displace Russian gas but it will push down Russian prices.

Putin is addressing these problems in two ways. First, he wants to divide the US and Europe over the issue of sanctions on Russia. There had been hopes that the Trump administration would lead the way in easing restrictions but the President, mired in allegations of his aides’ collusion with Russia, is in no position even to smile at Moscow.

Rex Tillerson, former boss of America’s Exxon oil and gas company, was once a fierce opponent of sanctions but has changed his tune since becoming US Secretary of State. Support for sanctions in the EU has, however, been weakening for some time.

Second, Putin aims to persuade Europe that energy security means reliable and affordable supply rather than having to do the political bidding of Moscow. It will take some doing to persuade countries like Poland that this is true. The dependency of Balkan states on Russian gas, and the not-so-subtle influence Moscow exerts on local decision-making, has been noted by Western intelligence analysts.

Schroder can play a part in both aims. After all, the friendship with Putin dates back to 2003 when, as German leader, he took a stand against George. W Bush’s war on Saddam Hussein. Raw anti-Americanism helped him win an election, the contempt of the Bush team, and the glowing admiration of a still-callow Putin.

For Schroder, and indeed for the current German government, US ideas about arming Ukrainian forces are beyond the pale. They would, in the German view, destabilise the whole of eastern Europe. Germany quietly agrees with Putin’s scepticism about the White House’s intentions and its unpredictability. Trump is thus driving Germany and Russia closer. The foreign bugbears of this year’s German election campaign have been Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Donald Trump. Putin barely gets a mention.

In June, Putin invited Schroder and German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel to a lavish dinner in St Petersburg. It is unclear whether they discussed Ukraine but soon afterwards Gabriel said a new Russian peace plan should be taken seriously. He also called the Russian land-grab of Crimea in 2014 “unconstitutional” — surely the mildest way of describing an annexation.

The supposed plan, involving the deployment of UN peacekeepers, is intended to do no more than freeze the conflict to Moscow’s advantage and steal some of the thunder from Ukraine, which will use this week’s UN general assembly to put forward its own ideas.

Putin, an admirer of German virtues since his KGB days in Dresden, seems to believe the country can become a special partner after Merkel’s presumed re-election this month and his own re-enthronement next year.

The relationship may not have the same intimacy as the one he enjoys with Schroder but it will nonetheless be an attempt at a reset. He will offer a scaling-down of the Ukrainian crisis in return for the lifting of EU sanctions on the Russian energy sector. Schroder and his Social Democrat chums in Berlin think that would be a reasonable deal. Merkel, though, would be well advised to look out for the elephant trap.

The Times