Scholz in Moscow: can he stay Putin’s hand?

To drown out the deafening din of Russian armour, Europe and the United States have pulled out all the diplomatic stops. From Secretary of State Blinken to President Macron, from Foreign Secretary Truss to Defence Secretary Wallace, the visitors from the West have trooped through the antechambers of the Kremlin to appeal to Putin and his henchmen. Each one has played a slightly different tune, thus far to no avail. Now it is the turn of the German Chancellor, whose contribution hitherto has been little more than whistling in the dark.

Olaf Scholz arrives in Moscow literally on the eve of war. Is it too late for such a geopolitical novice to make any difference? Or is William Hague — a former Foreign Secretary and biographer of the man who outmanoeuvred Napoleon, Pitt the Younger — correct to say that this visit “may be the last chance to persuade Putin that the West is stronger than he thinks”?

The hand that Scholz is playing certainly looks weak. Not only is he faced with a seemingly implacable adversary, but he leads the most pacific and Russophile of Europe’s major nations. There is no appetite for any military assistance to Ukraine: indeed, the German arms industry actually supplies substantial quantities of dual purpose equipment to Russia. His own party, the Social Democrats, is one of three in a coalition of the unwilling and it lags behind the opposition Christian Democrats in the polls. For obvious historical reasons, all Germans dread conflict with Moscow; many prefer the Russians to the Americans. All this limits the Chancellor’s room for manoeuvre.

Yet Scholz does have some cards to play. Boris Johnson aimed a shot across Germany’s bows yesterday when he called on “all European countries” to “get Nord Stream out of the bloodstream”. But the fact that Scholz has a veto on activating Russia’s most expensive joint project with the West gives him leverage that Macron, Johnson and even Biden lack.

Scholz represents Germany, an economy that is nearly three times the size of Russia’s, with twice the GDP per capita. Yet Germany spends 1.4 per cent of its GDP on defence; Russia spends 4.3 per cent. Militarily — and that is what counts right now — there is no comparison. It isn’t just that the Russians have nukes; they also have combat experience. The most that Scholz can threaten is to support the sanctions package being drawn up in Washington and London. Even that would mean sacrifices for German consumers and exporters that may be greater than they are prepared to bear.

The other card that Scholz can play rests on the very close economic and political ties between Germany and Ukraine, which might enable him to offer reassurances about the future relationship between Kyiv and Moscow. On Monday he stood next to President Zelensky and said that Ukrainian membership of NATO was “in practice off the agenda”. If Scholz has been empowered to offer a promise that Ukraine will never join NATO, then Putin can stand down his forces and declare victory, without the risks attendant on war.

That, however, is a big “if”. Throughout this crisis, the Zelensky government has insisted that Ukraine’s aspiration to join the Atlantic alliance is non-negotiable. It is even enshrined in the Ukrainian constitution. Without it, the country will always be vulnerable to Russian blackmail. The reason why Ukrainians have removed pro-Russian regimes three times in the past thirty years is that they want to be fully integrated into Western security structures. Why should Zelensky allow Scholz to hand Putin his main demand on a plate?

Yet the fact that, with the possible exception of Poland, not a single NATO country is prepared to fight for Ukraine has given Zelensky pause. At his joint press conference with Scholz, he described the hope of NATO membership as his “dream”. But he knows full well that this dream is not going to be realised any time soon. He will have heard this from both Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson on their visits last week. The German Chancellor came with offers of soft loans, but on the NATO question he will have echoed Bismarck, who famously declared that the Balkans were “not worth the bones of a Pomeranian grenadier”. Article 5 of the treaty obliges all member states to defend any ally that is attacked. Germans are not going to fight for Ukraine; indeed, it is doubtful whether they would even fight for Germany.

Scholz can offer Putin a grand bargain. If Russia chooses peace, not only will new sanctions be averted but existing sanctions could be lifted. As long as the troops go back to barracks, everything will be on the table. Recognition of the Russian annexation of Crimea can be discussed. Offensive weapons can be removed from frontline states. Russian security concerns could be taken into account before any new members are admitted to NATO — not just Ukraine, but Finland, Sweden, Georgia and other states that border Russia too. Other confidence-building measures — from joint exercises to cultural exchanges — could be essayed to reduce the likelihood of a recurrence of the present, highly destabilising crisis.

Not everyone in NATO would like such proposals: the British and Americans would be aghast. But such a comprehensive vision of détente would be squarely in the tradition of which Scholz is a proud representative — the tradition of Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik in the early 1970s. In the German narrative, what began as a highly controversial policy became a bipartisan one, culminating in the reunification of Germany and the end of the Cold War. Scholz would dearly love to be cast as a second Brandt, preventing the new Cold War between Russia and the West from becoming a hot one.

The unknown and unknowable factor is, of course, the mind of Vladimir Putin. Hague, who met the Russian several times over the years, has a stab at getting inside his head in today’s Times (behind a paywall). “I am still, for a few more hours, open to negotiation. But that has to mean the total neutralisation of Ukraine so that it can be absorbed more gradually,” he writes, in a chilling impersonation. “It is a problem with democracy that the leaders have to look like they are doing something even when they’re not. I prefer to hold still while I’m actually doing something. It is so much more intimidating.”

While Scholz haggles with Putin, he is not only gearing up for battle abroad, but battening down the hatches at home. Alexei Navalny, the only real threat to Putin’s authority, goes on trial today, accused of embezzlement. The trial will take place at the penal colony where he has been incarcerated. Family and friends are excluded; his lawyer is deprived of phone and computer. The trial is a formality; Navalny’s chances of acquittal are as good as zero. Arraigned on trumped up charges of corruption, Russia’s leading voice of opposition will be sentenced to ten years, on the orders of the most corrupt man in Russia, if not the world. Few suppose that Navalny will emerge alive.

Will Scholz dare to raise this or any other human rights case on his visit today? After all, his predecessor Angela Merkel gave Navalny refuge and treatment at the Charité Hospital in Berlin after he was poisoned by Putin’s goons just 18 months ago. Yet human rights, like NATO expansion, are off the menu, crowded out by the fear of war. It is a catastrophic failure of Western diplomacy that the agenda is now being decided solely by the autocrat of the conference table. Putin alone will dictate the course of events over the coming hours and days.

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