Why didn’t we see it? Did we not want to see it? These were the questions that, after Feb. 24, 2022, prompted longtime Moscow correspondent for Stern magazine, Katja Gogler, and her husband, Georg Mascolo, former editor-in-chief of Der Spiegel, to conduct an in-depth investigation into Germany’s Russia policy during the Putin era. The result is a conscientiously detailed page-turner, just as compelling as mindboggling with the telling title: “Das Versagen” (The Failure).
When Gerhard Schröder became chancellor in 1998, he received a secret dossier from the foreign intelligence service, BND, pointing to the symbiotic relationship between the Russian secret services and the Russian mafia, with the “emphatic support” of the Yeltsin government.
In 1999, shortly after former KGB officer in the GDR and FSB director Vladimir Putin was appointed prime minister, the German embassy in Moscow reported that Chekists had taken power. The German secret services were therefore skeptical when Putin became president: “From the outset, the BND regarded him as a head of state deeply entangled in organized crime and secret service structures. A kind of KGB Mafia, a criminal at the top of the state,” according to former BND Vice President Arndt Freytag von Loringhoven.
This seems forgotten during the Orthodox Christmas celebrations in Moscow in early January 2001, to which Putin invited the Schröder couple. An unforgettable day: Red Square walk, romantic sleigh ride through Kolomenskoye Park with its old tsarist residence, Giselle ballet at the Bolshoi, worship at Christ the Savior Cathedral, and a visit to the home of the Putins. The two men even went to the sauna together.
Thus blossoms an indestructible bromance and partnership between Germany and Russia. For Putin, Germany, already Russia’s most lucrative export market for gas and oil, is the means to his ultimate goal: restoring Russia as a world power. Remarkably, their meetings occur mainly in private; Foreign Minister Yoschka Fischer, advisors, and protocol staff are kept out as much as possible, while interpreters are unnecessary.
Although he had already subjugated the Russian media and still wages a particularly brutal war in Chechnya, Putin also succeeds in winning over the Bundestag in September 2001.
His speech, delivered in German, seems to herald a new era of peaceful German-Russian relations and earns him a standing ovation. However, key points were devised by two Germans who had been consulted beforehand: Horst Teltschik, co-negotiator of German reunification, and Klaus Mangold, chairman of the East-Committee, the trade association that promotes economic relations with countries east of Germany. In fact, the Bundestag members are applauding German wishful thinking about a joint European, economic, and democratic future with Russia.
In 2005, at the end of his chancellorship, Schröder strikes a deal with Putin, the actual head of state-owned Gazprom, to build a gas pipeline through the Baltic Sea to Germany. Barely 15 days after his resignation, he becomes chairman of the shareholders’ committee of the Nord Stream pipeline. A controversial move, smacking of revolving door corruption, marking the beginning of a long and highly profitable career in Russia’s gas and oil empire, including as a prominent Kremlin lobbyist.
Together with former Stasi agent, Putin confidant, and Nord Stream 1 and 2 CEO Matthias Warnig, Schröder bears primary responsibility for Germany’s dependence on Russian gas. Just like his successor Angela Merkel, who also insists, until the end of her tenure in 2021, that the pipelines are a purely private economic project. Though her governments wield a political argument too: close economic relations foster democratization. A grave misconception: Germany’s energy dependence, its billions, actually sustain the Putin system and fuel his imperialist dreams.
In 2008, the NATO summit in Bucharest is dominated by heated discussions over the membership applications of Georgia and Ukraine. US President George W Bush is in favor, thus refusing to grant Putin, to whom this is a red line, veto power. Ultimately, NATO’s door is formally opened to both countries, yet actual accession is impeded: largely due to Merkel, there is no membership action plan. Georgia and Ukraine remain in limbo security-wise, though Merkel believes in hindsight that the Bucharest compromise prevented a direct Russian attack on a still defenseless Ukraine.
Which makes it even more incomprehensible why her government does not develop a Ukraine-strategy but effectively rewards Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia by entering into military cooperation with Moscow. Though Russia won the brief war against Georgia, its army did not make a good impression. Putin, therefore, seeks to modernize it, and the Germans, while making substantial cuts to their own defense, are willing to help. Military cooperation leads to trust, and that leads to peace, so goes the argument.
This leads to years of negotiations on the export of sensitive weapons technology to Russia. At the top of Russia’s wish list, alongside the Leopard tank: the state-of-the-art Altmark military training center. Here, laser-based simulated combat comes as close as it gets to lethal action with live ammunition. Every tank or soldier that is hit is recorded. Thousands of sensors feed battlefield data in real time into the Duell Simulator computer program, which acts as an objective referee.
The Russians want no fewer than eight of these centers, which should be operational by 2020, a mega deal for arms manufacturer Rheinmetall, worth around €1 billion ($1.2 billion). In June 2011, Russian Defense Minister Serdyukov and Chief of General Staff Makarov visit Rheinmetall in Unterluss – Europe’s largest private weapons testing area – on the occasion of the festive signing ceremony for the first center, worth €135 million ($160 million).
In subsequent years, Rheinmetall engineers travel frequently to Mulino in Russia, where the training center is to be situated, while Russian experts are welcomed at Rheinmetall and the Bundeswehr. Plans are also being made for the exchange of officers to the respective headquarters and for joint German-Russian maneuvers north of St Petersburg.
However, at the last minute, due to the annexation of Crimea, the German government terminates the military cooperation. Export licenses for the training center and the mobile field camp, both ready for delivery, are rescinded. Nevertheless, even without further Rheinmetall support, a combat training center is being put into operation in Mulino. In September 2021, Sapad-21, one of the last major rehearsals for the large-scale attack on Ukraine, is held here.
Incidentally, Gogler&Mascolo forgot to note that military cooperation with NATO member Germany was completely at odds with the narrative that the alliance posed a threat to Russia.
When Russia in 2014 also wages war in Donbas, Merkel commits herself to a ceasefire and a lasting solution during the Minsk-process. Ukrainian ambassador to Berlin Andrij Melnyk lauds the Minsk II agreement as her courageous diplomatic masterpiece: “It stopped Putin’s advance. But then Merkel continued to cozy up to him instead of responding forcefully, which was a fatal mistake.”
Not only does Minsk II ultimately prove unacceptable to the Ukrainian parliament, but the border with Russia also remains open. The ceasefire is never observed or strictly enforced, leading to an even more devastating war.
Even the hybrid war against Germany itself remains without significant consequences. Whether it concerns, as in April 2015, hacks of Bundestag accounts including Merkel’s by Russia’s GRU, polarizing disinformation, instrumentalization of migration flows, assassinations with chemical weapons in England, the murder of a Chechen asylum seeker in Berlin, etc., during her 16-year reign, Merkel undermines her own willingness to engage in dialogue by failing to pair it with deterrence.
Not only is military aid to Ukraine taboo, the German government even fails to empower its own democracy, as cyber security and military defense are being neglected.
Moreover, Russian money is still welcome. Take Putin’s old judo buddy, billionaire Arkady Rotenberg, who built the illegal Kerch Bridge that tethers Crimea to Russia, despite EU sanctions, he is able to acquire the most expensive real estate projects in Munich, Berlin, and elsewhere.
“The idea that political change could be achieved through economic integration was the greatest failure of German foreign policy,” says Sigmar Gabriel, who served under Merkel, first as Minister for Economic Affairs and later as foreign minister, in self-critical hindsight. Which does not absolve him from the fact that he was largely responsible too.
Despite the annexation of Crimea and the Donbas war, the hybrid war against Germany itself, warnings and massive resistance from Central and Eastern European states, the US, the European Parliament, and the European Commission, as well as a Bundestag motion by the Greens to halt construction, the government remained adamant in pursuing Nord Stream 2.
To keep the Minsk process going, it was deemed necessary not to annoy Putin by depriving him of his pet project. Moreover, cheap gas for German industry and consumers was more important than solidarity with Eastern Europe. Consequently, Russia’s share of total German gas imports would increase significantly to 55% in 2022.
Germany’s mindboggling blindness to the geopolitical dimension and its national security interests comes even more to the fore in its approval of an asset swap between the German oil and gas company BASF/Wintershall and Gazprom. As a result, Germany’s largest gas storage facility in Rehden falls in September 2015 into Russian hands. In September 2021, the average fill rate of German gas storage facilities is 64%, with Rehden at 4%, causing prices to surge. According to indications the BND obtained, replenishment was blocked by the Kremlin.
“I am so furious with us because we have failed historically,” tweeted Annegreet Kramp-Karrenbauer, Minister of Defense from 2019 to 2021, on Feb. 24, 2022.
“Das Versagen” is a poignant book. Especially since Germany, more than any other country, has accepted responsibility for its own criminal history, and now, once again, has to face up to its own failure. And it can only be regarded as a particularly tragic twist of fate that this failure arose in part precisely from Germany’s commendable willingness to learn from the mistakes of the past.
Gogler & Masculo: “Above all, we owe this evaluation, at the very least, honesty and sincere attention, to the people of Ukraine. They have been braving the war for years. They are paying the highest price. Every single day.”
Meanwhile, since the United States drastically reduced its security assistance to Ukraine, Germany has stepped up to the plate and was far by the biggest donor in 2025. In 2026, it increased its support even further. Chancellor Friedrich Merz has also taken a leading role in supporting Kyiv diplomatically.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.