Germany’s ‘Putin-caressers’ start coming to terms with their naivety
Prominent figures in Germany are coming under increasing pressure to publicly distance themselves from Vladimir Putin amid accusations that they are bringing shame on the country and themselves.
The range of so-called Putin-Versteher (Putin-understanders) – those who have sought to explain or justify the Russian leader’s actions – include figures from the far-left Die Linke and the far-right AfD, as well as members of the Social Democrats and some conservatives who have tried to keep him on side in the interests of their constituents and German energy security.
“Putin-Versteher are on the precipice,” the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Sunday (FAS) said, listing an array of German politicians it said were now paying the price for having mistakenly thought they could “tame Vladimir Putin with empathy and friendly accommodation”.
The tabloid Bild went further, describing a range of politicians as “Putin Streichler” – or Putin caressers – saying over the past 20 years these included not just former chancellor Gerhard Schröder, but the former Social Democrat foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, now Germany’s president, the former state leader of Bavaria, Edmund Stoiber, and Angela Merkel, who it accused of pushing the building of Nord Stream 2 and holding back with sanctions even amid widespread evidence of Kremlin misbehaviour.
But the invasion of Ukraine has marked a turning point, with analysts concluding that many politicians had been stunned into a change of heart.
Germany’s former defence minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer implied that some Germans, including herself, had taken a shamefully naive approach towards Putin’s politics.
“I’m so angry at ourselves for our historical failure,” she wrote on Twitter. “After
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