Russia has begun negotiating about who negotiates. Moscow has spent years demanding Ukraine give up land its army has failed to take. Now it is also trying to pick who sits across the table from it. On Sunday, the EU said no.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, speaking to reporters in Brussels on 11 May, rejected Vladimir Putin’s proposal to install former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder as Europe’s negotiator with Moscow. Schröder, she said, had been “a high-ranking lobbyist for Russian state companies.”
After the 9 May Victory Day parade, Putin floated Schröder’s name.
If he negotiated for the EU, he would “sit on both sides of the table.” Letting Russia name the EU’s negotiator, she added, would be “not very wise.”
The proposal had come from a Red Square podium two days earlier. After the 9 May Victory Day parade, Putin floated Schröder’s name, saying Europe should send a negotiator who “didn’t say nasty things” about Russia.
Schröder—personal friend of Putin, former chair of Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 boards, former Rosneft board member until 2022—fit the description. His post-chancellorship career on the boards of Russian state companies became so emblematic of Russian elite capture that commentators coined a term for it: Schröderization.
Russia negotiates about who negotiates
Opponents don’t usually pick each other’s negotiators. Russia is testing whether it can.
Schröder is not the first name Moscow has tried to place at the table. In February, Russia sent Vladimir Medinsky to Geneva—a historian-ideologue whose role, British analysts argued, was designed to make Ukrainian and Western counterparts walk away so Russia could blame them for the collapse.
The Schröder proposal extends the same playbook from the opposite direction. If Russia cannot dictate the demands, it can try to shape the room.
Berlin said no. Then floated a duo.
The German government rejected Schröder before Kallas did. Berlin called the proposal a Scheinangebot—a sham offer.
Then Tagesspiegel reported the SPD–CDU/CSU ruling coalition was discussing a “Schröder-Steinmeier duo,” pairing the ex-chancellor with sitting Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who, as foreign minister during the Minsk years, faced his own criticism for accommodation toward Moscow. Berlin’s view: Schröder could not handle the role alone, but with Steinmeier it might be “an interesting option.”
“If one of the conditions is the participation of a former chancellor, this should be carefully examined.”
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SPD foreign policy spokesman Adis Ahmetović was the dissenter: “Our goal must be to sit at the negotiating table. If one of the conditions is the participation of a former chancellor, this should be carefully examined.”
Steinmeier’s term as president expires in early 2027. A short runway, if it goes anywhere.
The pressure goes one way
Kallas’ rejection lands as Putin’s aide Yuri Ushakov told state TV that US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner would visit Moscow “soon enough” to continue the dialogue.
Ushakov also restated Moscow’s core demand: Ukrainian withdrawal from the parts of Donetsk Oblast its army has failed to take, including Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. “Until Ukraine takes that step, we can hold several more rounds, dozens of rounds of negotiations, but we’ll be stuck in the same place,” he said.
Every move in the talks is tactical, not transformative.
Mediators describe a moment of ripeness—the point at which battlefield or economic pressure forces a real shift in position. Russia has not reached one. Until it does, every move in the talks is tactical, not transformative. Including, now, the move to nominate who should sit on the other side.
