Documents from the German Foreign Ministry, intelligence and some other departments, as well as expert accounts, leave no doubt that for all the years he has been in power in Russia, Berlin has had enough reasons not to trust Vladimir Putin. But until the very beginning of the war against Ukraine, German politicians ignored the alarming signals and only increased the dependence of the German economy on Moscow.
The book by German journalists Katja Gloger and Georg Mascolo entitled “The Failure: An Investigation into German Policy Towards Russia“ is dedicated to this very topic. The authors explain to DW when and why, in their opinion, Germany should have changed its approach to Russia.
Putin and his roles
As a correspondent for the magazine “Stern“ in Moscow, Katya Gloger was one of the first foreign journalists to get to know Putin personally. During the months she accompanied Putin, she not only visited his home, where his daughter was required to play the piano for the guests, but also visited his gym.
“At the sight of this thin man with a gray face, wearing suits that did not fit him perfectly at the time, many of us (foreign correspondents – ed.) asked ourselves – who is this Mr. Putin anyway?“, Gloger recalls. At the beginning of the century, Putin did not yet occupy a prominent place for foreign correspondents working in Moscow, "although for several years he had been a central figure in the power system of the late Yeltsin period."
At the beginning of his first presidential term, Putin sought to present himself as a novice who wanted to learn from the West, and he played this role not only to the media, but also to the then German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder - for example, he asked questions about housing construction or the pension system in Germany, but in reality he was only trying to make a good impression, remaining a staunch KGB man, the journalist recalls.
German special services for Vladimir Putin
Katya Gloger's husband - Georg Mascolo, who is the former editor-in-chief of the magazine “Spiegel“ and is known in Germany for his investigative journalism, adds: “When Putin first emerged on the political scene, little was known about him in the world. But in Germany it was not like that – not only because Putin had previous experience with Germany, but also because Germany had previous experience with Putin“.
According to Mascolo, there were two camps in the German Foreign Ministry from the very beginning – depending on their attitude towards Putin. Some believed that despite his KGB past “after the agony of the Yeltsin regime“ he could be worked with. Others, especially representatives of the special services, warned: “Be careful. "A secret service agent remains a secret service agent."
In their book, Gloger and Mascolo cite an assessment of German counterintelligence describing Putin from his first presidential term as "a cynical KGB officer with a deeply nationalistic mindset." As Mascolo notes: "The warning signals came very early, but they were ignored."
How Putin's speech in the Bundestag was prepared
In September 2001, Putin gave a speech in German to the Bundestag, which was met with enthusiastic applause by the deputies. He was assisted by his close friend Matthias Warnig, a former Stasi officer and later managing director of the Gazprom subsidiary “Nord Stream 2“, as well as Horst Teltschik, a long-time foreign policy advisor to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. It was they who formulated the two key messages in the speech: “Russia is a friendly European country“ and “Russia is a reliable business partner and is ready for interesting deals“.
“Then many thought the following - the Russian president came to us, who speaks to us in the language of Kant, Goethe and Schiller and thus reveals his heart to us. However, this was not exactly the case, because to a certain extent we had written this speech of Putin for ourselves“, says Katya Gloger.
On the same day, Putin also spoke before the Bundestag's International Policy Committee, where there is not a trace of Kant, Schiller and Goethe, Mascolo summarizes the minutes of this meeting. But there are statements like: “I'm tired of your double standards“, “We're tired of listening to your criticisms about the war in Chechnya“, “If NATO continues in the same vein, there will be no common European home“.
“The bloody trail of Putin's policies“
"Putin's policies and methods left a bloody mark early on", says Gloger, referring, for example, to the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya in October 2006 or the polonium poisoning of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in November of the same year. Gloger therefore notes that against this background, Germany should have experienced its "turning point" earlier - long before Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced the same in February 2022 - after Russia's attack on Ukraine.
But can Germany's long-standing benign policy towards Russia be explained by naivety? Katya Gloger is categorical: "It was not naivety. We assume that in Germany they did not want to see to a sufficient extent the growing radicalization and ideologization of the system of the Russian president, who from one moment on began to believe that he was fulfilling a historical mission of restoring the former empire and opposing the West with its entire normative system“.
On Germany's energy dependence on Russia
Gloger calls the construction of the “Nord Stream 2“ gas pipeline, agreed in September 2015 - after the Russian annexation of Crimea, a political decision. According to the author, the arguments of the then Chancellor Angela Merkel were: “If we want to achieve success in the Minsk Agreements, we must support “Nord Stream 2“. And so, perhaps, we will be able to buy time for Ukraine“.
Explaining the title of the book, Gloger notes the following in relation to Merkel's diplomatic efforts: “We try to be fair and come to the conclusion that this is a strategic failure, since the policy towards Russia could and should have changed in 2014 at the latest. Was this only related to profit and pressure from the economy? Here, the Chancellor's efforts aimed at preventing a possible escalation in eastern Ukraine and freezing the conflict should be noted first and foremost. It can be said that they were well-intentioned, but one can fail even with the best intentions“.
Glogger also reminds us that by the beginning of the war against Ukraine, the share of Russian energy supplies to Germany had reached almost 60 percent. Reducing this dependency has cost Germany tens of billions of euros.
Author: Anastasia Shepeleva