Poker-faced Olaf Scholz picks his moment for peace in Ukraine

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz keeps his thoughts to himself during a visit to Moscow on Tuesday. Picture: AFP

At least there is one respect in which Olaf Scholz differs from Angela Merkel, his predecessor as chancellor of Germany: he has a good poker face.

Standing before the gilded doors of a hall in the Kremlin, he watched President Vladimir Putin accuse Ukraine of carrying out “a genocide” against its Russian-speaking minority and rail against NATO’s military intervention in Yugoslavia, but his expression barely shifted.

It was only when Scholz turned to the threat of an imminent armed conflict that he allowed any emotions to show.

“For my generation, war in Europe has become unthinkable and we must ensure that it remains so,” he said. “It’s our damned duty and task as heads of state and government to prevent a conflict from escalating in Europe.”

It is hard to think of a less messianic world leader than Scholz. The Chancellor, 63, is a studiously unheroic figure who plays with his cards close to his chest, often confining himself to measured generalities in the matter-of-fact tones of a Hamburg industrial lawyer.

Before the talks on Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT) with Putin, however, Ukraine had cast Scholz as more or less the last man standing in the way of armed conflict.

Germany has carefully put itself in a position to seize precisely this kind of moment. While some NATO allies have shipped missiles to Ukraine and issued apocalyptic warnings of an imminent attack, Scholz has preserved a sphinx-like “strategic ambiguity”, including on the future of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany.

This fence-sitting has riled Ukraine and irked some European neighbours. “I cannot understand some of the positions Germany has taken,” one senior foreign diplomat in Berlin said. “Refusing to send weapons to Ukraine is a big deal. And why won’t he even say the words ‘Nord Stream 2’ in public?”

Yet figures close to Scholz say his ambivalence is intended to maximise his room for manoeuvre as an “honest broker” between Ukraine, NATO and Russia. Over nearly six years as a cabinet minister under Merkel, 67, he absorbed her techniques for defusing conflict: waiting things out, avoiding public provocations, searching for common ground, systematically chipping big problems down into smaller chunks.

Tuesday’s meeting was not quite the last-chance saloon it was made out to be in some quarters. Nor did Scholz come up with a masterstroke that could radically alter Putin’s calculations. Yet if patient, undemonstrative diplomacy can avert a war in Ukraine, this was at least a first step down that road.

The Times