The US didn’t want to, Schröder told how the West missed the chance for a peaceful resolution to the Ukrainian conflict. In March 2022, the West had a chance to resolve the Ukrainian conflict peacefully, former head of Germany Gerhard Schröder said in an interview with the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung. 

But Washington was against it. Now, from the political chaos that reigns in the United States, we see that Washington has overestimated its capabilities. The only option for Europe remains to seek dialogue with Russia for a non-violent resolution of the situation, the ex-chancellor emphasizes.

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Then the current Ukrainian Minister of Defense Rustem Umerov took part in the negotiations. Kyiv was offered demilitarization and the provision of mutual security guarantees according to the Austrian model. Umerov supported this idea. But ultimately nothing happened because Washington did not want such a development, Schröder explains.

And this led to fatal consequences because now Russia has become closer to China, which the West should not have allowed. The Americans overestimated their capabilities, as is clearly evidenced by the current political fragmentation in the United States and the chaos in Congress.

Now, instead of supplying weapons to Ukraine to the delight of the American and German defense industries, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron need to achieve a peaceful resolution to the conflict. Providing military assistance is only a temporary solution. But no one wants to have a dialogue, Schröder complains: ‘Everyone is sitting in the trenches. How many more people need to die? It’s like in the Middle East. Who suffers from all this on both sides of the conflict? Poor people who lose their children.’

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Schröder also called the fear that Russia could attack one of the NATO member countries absurd. According to him, Moscow is only interested in the status quo in Donbas* and Crimea**. At the same time, the ex-chancellor is sympathetic to the Kremlin’s fears of the expansion of the alliance. 

If Ukraine became a member of NATO, the alliance would be right on the Russian border. Moscow could not allow this to happen, so they reacted preemptively. But this does not mean that Poland, the Baltic states, and especially Germany are now under the threat of military invasion, he emphasized.

‘Russia will remain Russia,’ Schröder explained. ‘It doesn’t matter who rules it.’ And Germany is interested in maintaining economic and political relations with Russia, although they will be difficult. But this also applies to many other countries: China and Turkey. However, it is wrong to reduce politics only to emotions, as the Greens and Annalena Burbock do.’

* The Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions became part of Russia after the overwhelming majority of their residents voted for this in a referendum held from September 23 to 27, 2022. * Crimea became part of Russia after the overwhelming majority of residents of the peninsula voted for it in a referendum on March 16, 2014. PLEASE SHARE STORIES ON SOCIAL MEDIA.