The Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany, Oleksii Makeiev, has strongly condemned the attendance of former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD) at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s birthday celebration, calling the action “disgusting.” According to Makeiev, who spoke to the newspaper “Tagesspiegel”, it is particularly odious that an ex-Chancellor would warmly embrace a war criminal, especially on the day that five children in Pryluky were killed by a Russian missile in their own home. Makeiev also pointed to the 35 civilians killed in Kramatorsk during a Russian attack on Thursday, emphasizing that these children-and the others-will never celebrate another birthday. He stated that the whole world is watching these images in horror, adding that Schröder traveled to the birthday party of the man responsible for these atrocities, suggesting his behavior is hard to match.
Further criticizing the former Chancellor, Roderich Kiesewetter (CDU) told the “Tagesspiegel” that Schröder should ultimately be declared “persona non grata” at all official and democratic events. Kiesewetter argued that if such conduct is minimized, justified, or relativized, it exposes how deeply the glorification of Moscow remains entrenched in parts of German politics. He asserted that Schröder has acted for years as an instrument of Russia and is now shamelessly revealing this, stating that anyone who “celebrates the birthday with the war criminal Putin, while Russian missiles daily terrorize Ukrainian cities and kill innocent civilians, makes himself complicit in this war of annihilation.”
Kiesewetter deemed it intolerable that “a misguided German ex-Chancellor, for whom personal profit and Russian money are clearly more important than the well-being of our country and the European security order, carries out side diplomacy.” He warned that this behavior severely harms German and European interests and engenders “deep and legitimate mistrust regarding Germany’s reliability” among partners, particularly in the Baltics, Ukraine, Poland, and Northern Europe.
