It may be commonplace—on both sides—to refer to “Russia-West relations,” but in reality, those relations have always followed two distinct paths. Russian-American relations have tended to revolve around politics, while Russian-German relations were firmly based on economic considerations. 

While Russia and the United States discussed arms control, global security, and—broadly speaking—world order, Russia and Germany focused on more practical and specific matters. The deterioration of relations cost the United States virtually nothing: both countries were concerned with rhetoric, thinking more about the reactions of their actual or potential allies and the public. Germans, on the other hand, have always understood that there is a high price to pay for their country’s deteriorating relations with Russia.

For this reason, the Kremlin believed that its relationship with Germany would be more sustainable and resilient than with the United States. Paradoxically, even while negating Europe’s sovereignty on foreign policy matters and referring to Europe as a US lackey, the Kremlin incorporated that sovereignty into its foreign policy calculations. Those calculations seemed reasonable on the eve of the war, when confrontation did not yet appear inevitable, and whose appalling consequences had not yet materialized. In early February 2022, for instance, many criticized German Chancellor Olaf Scholz for ostensibly evading a direct answer to the question of whether Germany would abandon the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project if the situation in Ukraine escalated. 

Both the Russian-American political model of bilateral relations and the Russian-German economic-political model swiftly collapsed following the Russian invasion. The economic safeguard that Moscow had relied on to overcome its self-inflicted challenges failed.

Germany has become a key driver for sanctions and political opposition against Russia

The Russian regime immediately interpreted Germany’s behavior as evidence of Berlin’s subservience to the US in contradiction of Germany’s own interests. In reality, this was the very awakening of European sovereignty at a critical juncture that Moscow had secretly hoped for in the past—only the awakening did not go as the Kremlin had planned. Germany is now one of the key drivers of sanctions and political opposition against Russia: a position buttressed by Germany’s moral tenets and history, hence its somewhat greater caution on defensive weapons shipments to Ukraine and more positive reception of those Russians who exhibit anti-war views.

Russia had hoped that, just as in the case of the economy, Germany’s moral and historical outlook would work in Moscow’s favor, but that did not happen either. Berlin’s position on this followed its own logic rather than outside guidance.

Of course, there were other factors besides economic ones that had previously facilitated closer ties between Germany and Russia. Vladimir Putin once impressed Bundestag members with a speech delivered in German, while former German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke Russian and understood Soviet realities thanks to her East German origins. The end of the Cold War trauma that had progressively driven a greater wedge between Russia and the US was absent from the relationship between Russia and Germany. Despite the poorly prepared withdrawal of Soviet troops from East Germany having been one of the most painful episodes for the Russian public in the wake of the Cold War, Russians found solace in recalling their country’s World War II victory over Germany. Any Cold War ressentiment was directed against the US rather than Germany, since it was the “deceitful” Americans who had defeated the Soviet Union in that war. Paradoxically, those feelings only took shape many years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when thoughts of Russia’s past grandeur were triggered by the strengthened economy of the early 2000s. What is more, Russians have long felt that they did Germany a favor by allowing its reunification to go ahead.

Guided by economic interests, grateful for the reunification, and—most importantly—remembering the devastation that Nazi Germany had wreaked on Europe and the Soviet Union, modern-day Germany was less inclined than others to talk to Russia from the standpoint of moral superiority. For its part, Putin’s burgeoning dictatorship sought to conceal its internal affairs from international observers to the greatest extent possible. Autocracies generally prefer a lack of transparency, and divulge little apart from their foreign policy interests.

At some point, however, Putin tried to expand domestic practices by destroying his enemies beyond his country’s borders. Russia’s act of aggression against neighboring Ukraine was a final turning point for Germany, causing the country to shift away from an economic towards a moral approach in its Russian policy. Not only has Germany failed to allay the world’s outrage over the Russian invasion, it has become one of the major sources of that outrage.

Even as early as the annexation of Crimea and the start of the Donbas war in 2014, and Moscow’s support for the brutal repression of Belarusian protests in 2020, many in Germany argued that the country’s historical obligations and the moral component of its foreign policy should be applied not only to Russia as a successor state of the Soviet Union, but to other post-Soviet states, too. As the Kremlin increasingly turned the World War II victory and victims’ memory into an authoritarian militaristic cult, Russia started to rapidly lose its monopoly over victory and remembrance. 

Germany was also fiercely vocal about Russia’s domestic politics following the poisoning of Alexei Navalny with a deadly nerve agent, when the opposition leader was taken to Germany for medical treatment. Following an open confrontation between Berlin and Moscow over that issue, there was no reason to expect anything less in response to an act of external aggression. Nonetheless, the Russian leadership was shocked by the speed and extent of the German response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine: Berlin withdrew from Nord Stream 2 even before the Russian invasion, and namely on the day Putin recognized the independence of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics.

German history may offer some clues for future relations with Russia

German history and the moral foundations of the country’s foreign policy also offer some reflections on future relations with Russia and its people. In the context of an aggressive war, old economic foundations will no longer suffice, since business as usual and economic lobbying for closer political ties with Russia’s current regime are impossible. 

As a country that has experienced an aggressive dictatorship itself, the lives of people in modern-day Russia and other states resonate with Germany. The latter can point out that collective responsibility for waging a war does not entail the eternal collective isolation of the entire nation. When U.S. President John F. Kennedy said “Ich bin ein Berliner” while standing next to the recently erected Berlin Wall, he was also addressing people who had once been the subjects of a totalitarian empire. The same people benefited from the Allied airlift of 1948. 

Germany can explain to the world that security is not the direct result of collective humiliation; that contrary to a now popular belief, it may be important to distinguish between the proponents and opponents of war and dictatorship among the citizens of the aggressor state. German experience can teach that a transition to the future form of the Russian state will require interaction with those members of Russian society that implicitly oppose the aggression rather than openly resisting it. 

German history reveals how important it is, amid all of this, to expose and punish those responsible for crimes against humanity, to dismantle dictatorial institutions, and reflect deeply as a nation on one's own guilt: after all, the word "repentance" reverberated throughout the whole population. And it is not impossible in the case of Russia if we remember that the word “penitence”, покаяние was widely accepted as national slogan during the Perestroika era, after the title of a Georgian movie famous at that time. 

It can also show that former mortal enemies, aggressors, and victims are able to coexist, and can even potentially coalesce into economic and political communities. While equally demonstrating that criticism of a political regime and society does not necessarily have to extend to a national culture that largely grew out of a confrontation with local political regimes and the aggressive indifference of ordinary people. Finally, it illustrates how the external weakness of the regime’s opponents and their ostensibly small numbers do not rule out the fact that their views could one day become their country’s policies. 

All opinions expressed in this piece are solely the author's and can in no way be associated with Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung or the editorial team.