Gerhard Schröder, Germany's chancellor from 1998 to 2005, attended Vladimir Putin's 74th birthday party in Moscow on Wednesday. The Kremlin framed the visit as spontaneous — claiming Putin learned of Schröder's presence in the capital via media reports and invited "his old friend" to his home. Photos released by the Russian government showed the two men smiling and clasping hands. Schröder was in Moscow on business. He had been named to the supervisory board of Hyperglobus, a Russian supermarket chain, just last week. Hyperglobus is the successor entity to German retailer Globus Holding's Russian operations. Globus divested its Russian stake last year under pressure following the invasion of Ukraine, but those stores continued operating under the new Hyperglobus brand — and Schröder promptly joined the board. The mechanics here are familiar. Globus exits Russia to comply with reputational and political pressure. The stores are rebranded. A former German chancellor lends his name and network to the successor entity. The underlying commercial relationship continues with a thin layer of separation. This is how divestment theater works in practice. Schröder's post-chancellorship trajectory has been a masterclass in regulatory capture running in reverse — not a corporation capturing government, but a foreign state capturing a former head of government. Since leaving office, Schröder has served on the boards of Russian state-owned energy firms including Rosneft and Nord Stream AG. His personal relationship with Putin has been continuous and public. The German political establishment has responded with half-measures. Schröder's taxpayer-financed Berlin office was closed in 2022. Fellow SPD members have called for his expulsion from the party. He survived the expulsion attempt. The SPD, Germany's governing center-left party, has been unable or unwilling to fully sever ties with its most prominent Russia-aligned figure. The Hyperglobus appointment adds a new wrinkle. Energy sector involvement could be framed as legacy commitments from a different era. Joining the board of a freshly rebranded Russian retail chain in 2025 — three years into a full-scale European land war — is a deliberate choice. It signals that Schröder's alignment with Russian commercial and political interests is not a relic but an active, expanding project. The broader question is what this costs Germany and Europe. Every Schröder appearance alongside Putin is a propaganda asset for the Kremlin — a former leader of NATO's most powerful European member state, smiling with Russia's president while Ukraine fights for survival. The reputational and diplomatic costs are diffuse and hard to quantify, but they are real and they accumulate.
