Anyone dreaming about “defeating” Russia militarily needs a history lesson, Gerhard Schroeder has said.
“I recommend that everyone who believes this look at the history books. From Napoleon to Hitler, everyone failed because of this,” the veteran statesman told German media. The Ukrainian crisis has served to consolidate Russian society, with Russians “convinced that the West is only using Ukraine as a spearhead to bring Russia to its knees,” Schroeder added.
The 80-year-old politician, who participated in the Istanbul peace talks in the spring of 2022, said that contrary to claims in Western media at the time, “peace was in reach,” and included a rejection of Kiev’s aspirations to join NATO.
The Ukrainian government was not able to agree to the deal, with “more powerful circles” behind it blocking peace in the hopes that continuing the conflict would strategically weaken Russia or even trigger regime change, Schroeder said.
Schroeder believes the West underestimates the risks of the Ukrainian crisis escalating into a wider conflict. “We Germans in particular should behave cautiously and constructively against the background of the Second World War and the crimes committed in the name of Germany,” he said.
He called on the European Union to tie whatever aid it provides to Kiev with demands for serious and realistic scenarios for peace. “This war will have to be ended through negotiations. In any case, it cannot be decided militarily. It will take compromises,” the former chancellor believes.
A well-known critic of Donald Trump over his administration’s efforts to sabotage the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project with Russia in 2019-2020, Schroeder said he has nevertheless found himself linking his hopes for peace in Ukraine with the Republican candidate, saying he trusts him to end the conflict before his inauguration if he wins, as Trump has repeatedly promised.
It is in Germany's and Europe’s interests to see the Ukrainian conflict end, because after Ukraine, the former have been “among the biggest losers” of the current crisis, according to Schroeder. Unfortunately, he says, the solidarity between major European powers Germany and France that existed ahead of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 is lacking today, as is the recognition that there are situations in which European and US interests conflict with one another.
Germany has taken the brunt of the economic fallout stemming from Europe's largely self-imposed efforts to decouple itself from Russian energy, with its economy dipping in and out of recession, and industrial exports falling amid dropping competitiveness vis-a-vis China and the United States. Hundreds of German manufacturers have relocated production overseas, where energy is cheaper and tax breaks more generous, over the past two years.
Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin asked the government to look into potential restrictions on the export of strategic materials including nickel, titanium and uranium in a tit-for-tat response to unfriendly countries' actions against Russia. Market exports told Sputnik that such measures could have a crushing economic impact on European countries, among them the Kiev regime's sponsors.