Germany’s SPD leader calls on ex-chancellor Schröder to quit party over Russia links

Amid the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, the former Chancellor of Germany, Gerhard Schröder has been asked to resign by the co-leader of Germany's largest party because of his links to Russia. After stating in an interview that Schröder had no intention of resigning from his seats on the boards of Russian energy firms due to the crisis in Ukraine, the co-leader of Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD) has urged the former chancellor to give up his SPD membership. 

Referring to Gerhard Schröder, one of two co-leaders of the SPD, Saskia Esken said, “(He) has been acting for many years now only as a businessman, and we should stop seeing him as an elder statesman, as a former chancellor," Euro News reported. During an interview with Deutschlandfunk radio, Esken claimed, “He earns his money with work for Russian state companies". She further asserted that Schröder should leave. 

According to The Guardian report, Schröder, who led Germany's government from 1998 to 2005, is on the board of Rosneft, a Russian oil corporation, and chairs the shareholder committee of Nord Stream, a pipeline business. 

On Monday morning, Saskia Esken told Deutschlandradio that resigning from these positions "would have been necessary to rescue his reputation as a former and formerly successful chancellor”. She added that he has not heeded that advice. 

SPD leadership sent Schröder a letter, requesting him for quitting

Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the SPD leadership sent the former chancellor Schröder a letter, requesting that he should quit his positions at Russian state-owned firms, which went unanswered, according to The Guardian report. When asked if the ex-chancellor should give up his membership in the German leader Olaf Scholz's centre-left party, Esken answered, "That he should." 

In addition to this, in an interview which has been published over the weekend in the New York Times, the 78-year-old sounded unrepentant about the ties between German industry and Russian energy suppliers, which were broadly continued by his successor, Angela Merkel, but have constrained Europe's largest economy's ability to respond to Putin's armed attacks with economic sanctions. 

"I don't do mea culpas," Schröder said in an interview with the New York Times from his office in Hanover, Germany. "It is not my thing.”  The Social Democrat said he would quit his board positions only if Russia decided to stop delivering gas to Germany, which he asserted "won't happen", The Guardian reported.  

Schröder attempted to defend his strong ties with Russia's president, Vladimir Putin while calling the Ukraine war "a mistake." "The image that people have of Putin is only half the truth,” he remarked. 

Meanwhile, some politicians of Scholz's coalition government, which includes the Green Party and the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), have openly criticised the leader for delaying heavy armament delivery to Ukraine in order to please his party's old guard. 

(Image: AP)