German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier speaks during a news conference at Rukla military base, Lithuania March 3, 2022. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins/File Photo
BERLIN, April 4 – German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, long a supporter of Western rapprochement with Russia, has expressed regret at his earlier stance and said his years of support for the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline was a clear mistake been.
Steinmeier, a social democrat who served as foreign minister under German Chancellor Angela Merkel before being appointed to the presidency, said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine meant he and others had to face honestly what they had done wrong.
“My sticking to Nord Stream 2 was clearly a mistake,” he said. “We were sticking to a bridge that Russia no longer believed in and that other partners had warned us about.”
Steinmeier was a prominent member of a wing of his Social Democratic Party, led by former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who argued that close economic ties with Russia were a way of anchoring it in a Western-leaning global system.
The now-cancelled Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which critics said had weakened Ukraine by cutting it out of the energy transit deal, was a centerpiece of that strategy.
This has sparked a growing backlash, with critics on social media repeatedly tweeting images of him lovingly hugging Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, while Ukraine’s Ambassador Andriy Melnyk has been outspoken in his criticism.
When Steinmeier hosted a “solidarity concert” for Ukraine, Melnyk sarcastically tweeted that the only soloists appeared to be Russians. “An affront,” he wrote. “Sorry, I’m not coming.”
Germany’s Federal President is supposed to be a unifying figure, above the cutting edge of day-to-day politics, enjoying the moral authority to urge people to behave better.
“We failed to build a common European house,” said Steinmeier. “I did not believe that Vladimir Putin would accept the complete economic, political and moral ruin of his country for the sake of his imperial madness,” he added.
“In this I was wrong, like others.”
Reporting by Andreas Rinke, writing by Thomas Escritt, editing by Alex Richardson