Former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder has come under sharp criticism in Berlin, including from Chancellor Friedrich Merz, after he spent Vladimir Putin’s 74th birthday at the Russian leader’s home in Moscow on October 7, the Kremlin said.
Schröder, 82, was already in the Russian capital on business when Putin learned of his presence from media reports on the morning of October 7, the presidential press service said. Putin then invited his “old friend” to his residence.
Photographs released by the Kremlin on October 8 showed the two men smiling and shaking hands in front of a traditional Russian stove, with a samovar used for boiling tea water visible in the background.
The official reason for the trip was commercial. Schröder was admitted on September 30 to the supervisory board of Hyperglobus, the Russian retailer that operates Globus-branded hypermarkets and became independent of Germany’s Globus Holding in January 2025.
On October 7 he visited a store in western Moscow, where employees greeted him with applause. He delivered a short welcome speech and met staff behind closed doors, Russian business media reported.
The chain runs 20 hypermarkets in Russia.
Putin met with ex-German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder on Russian leader's BIRTHDAY
Putin invited him to his home after learning that Schröder was in Moscow pic.twitter.com/3VP89h6YbX
— RTRussia (@RT_Russia_) October 8, 2026
The visit revived long-running controversy over Schröder’s ties to Moscow.
He was chancellor from 1998 to 2005 and later held senior roles linked to Russian energy interests, including Nord Stream and Rosneft. He chaired the Nord Stream 2 AG supervisory board and left the board of oil group Rosneft in May 2022.
Those contacts continued after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
On May 9, speaking after the Victory Day parade in Moscow, Putin named Schröder his preferred interlocutor among European politicians for mediation in the war. Berlin said it had noted the remarks but treated them as part of a series of sham offers.
On October 9 a deputy government spokesman, Steffen Meyer, said Merz was “deeply outraged” that the former chancellor had gone to Putin’s home for the birthday. He called the visit “downright immoral”.
Criticism also came from inside Schröder’s own Social Democratic Party (SPD), though there was also support, as some SPD members argue someone needs to talk to Russia. Party leader and Vice-Chancellor Lars Klingbeil told the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung the trip was “completely unacceptable”, while SPD member of parliament Ralf Stegner said Schröder had gone as a private citizen and was one of the few Germans who still had access to Putin.
Green politician Katrin Göring-Eckardt and Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, chair of the European Parliament’s security and defence subcommittee, called the visit a disgrace. Göring-Eckardt wrote on X that it was a disgrace for Germany, a betrayal of Europe and a disservice to peace. Strack-Zimmermann, of the Free Democrats, set the trip against Schröder’s refusal on health grounds to testify before a Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania inquiry into Nord Stream 2.
Schröder and his wife, So-Yeon Schröder-Kim, had not immediately responded to requests for comment, Reuters reported.
The celebrations came a day before a particularly deadly Russian attack on Ukraine: on October 8 a glide bomb hit two buses in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, killing at least 33 people and wounding 18, regional authorities said.
🥂 Gerhard Schröder came to Moscow’s Globus — and the visit was immediately “celebrated” with champagne. By accident
During a tour of the hypermarket, a cameraman knocked into a display and smashed several bottles of champagne.
But what is the former German chancellor doing in… pic.twitter.com/zxPonvH96K
— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) October 7, 2026
