German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visit to Ukraine on Nov. 1 has been planned to the minute.
She lands in Kyiv at 12:35 p.m. At 1:15 p.m. she will have lunch with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko at Mariyinsky Palace in central Kyiv. There, they will discuss Russia’s war on Ukraine in the Donbas and Russia’s militarization of the Azov Sea. After answering journalists’ questions, at 3 p.m. she will lay a wreath at a memorial to those killed during Ukraine’s EuroMaidan Revolution that overthrew President Viktor Yanukvoych on Feb. 22, 2014.
Back in Germany, in contrast, everything has been thrown into uncertainty by Merkel’s bombshell announcement on Oct. 29 that she will not again seek re-election as leader of the conservative Christian Democratic Union, or CDU. In addition, she will not seek to remain chancellor after her current term ends, or run for any other political office.
For 18 years, Merkel has led the CDU, which, with the ever-more-notable decay of the social-democratic SPD, is the only remaining so-called “Volkspartei”, or people’s party – catchall parties that appeal to a wide range of voters to the left and right of center.
So barring any political earthquakes over the next few years, the next German chancellor will likely come from the CDU. In the CDU, the party leader traditionally takes the chancellorship, so whoever wishes to be chancellor must also lead the party. Merkel has now broken this golden rule because she intends to step down as chancellor.
As Merkel has also led Europe’s response to the Kremlin’s aggression against Ukraine since 2014, the question of who succeeds her as CDU leader is thus important to Ukraine. So far three candidates have stepped forward: Friedrich Merz, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, and Jens Spahn. The next leader will be picked at the CDU party conference in December.
None of the potential successors have said much that is directly related to Ukraine or the Nord Stream 2 pipelines that bypass Ukraine’s transit system, but their stances on German-Russian and German-U.S. relations give a few hints about their positions on Ukraine.
Friedrich Merz
According to a poll published by major German news outlet Spiegel Online on Oct. 30, the CDU leadership front-runner, supported by 34 percent of Germans, is Friedrich Merz. Ironically, the 62-year-old has not been politically active for over 10 years, having lost a power struggle within the CDU against Merkel.
Merz, who supports fiscally liberal and politically conservative positions, is the most outspoken against Russia of the three current leadership candidates. In autumn of 2014, he spoke to German bankers at a meeting in Frankfurt am Main of his worries that Russia was relapsing into Soviet habits of behavior. “Russia is bombing its way back to the table of the Great Powers,” he said on another occasion.
Like most German politicians, Merz rejects military intervention in the war. But he has also repeatedly called for a tough stance against Russia. “Sanctions need to be a long-term commitment,” Merz said in 2016. “We need to stay consistent in our stance on Russia, or it will try to increase its influence.” He also said he did not feel “that the potential of economic sanctions was yet exhausted.”
On the one hand this seems only logical, after all, Merz since 2009 has been the chairman of the Atlantik-Brücke or Atlantic-Bridge association; an organisation that calls for an increased exchange of ideas between politicians, economists, and military personnel from Germany and the United States.
This naturally makes him a Russia hawk. On the other hand, Merz, from working in industry during his break from politics, also knows how averse the German economy is to sanctions. Germany is an exporting nation that self-confidently dubs itself the Exportweltmeister, or Export World Champion. Unemployment statistics are followed in the national media like soccer scores.
Perhaps that’s why Merz regrets that Berlin ignored the offer of a Euro-Asiatic free trade zone made by Russian President Vladimir Putin in the German parliament in 2001, calling it “one of the great mistakes in dealing with Russia.”
Merz consistently calls for a joint German-U.S. approach to Russia, including with the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. Should the United States seek better relations with Russia, Merz would surely go along with it.
Merz enjoys support from the German tabloid Bild, which, with a circulation of approximately 1.7 million, is still one of the largest newspapers in Europe. Since the beginning of the war in Donbas the paper’s journalists have supported positions friendly to Ukraine and critical of Russia.
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer
About 19 percent of Germans favor Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer as Merkel’s successor. The 56-year-old, whose name is frequently abbreviated to AKK in Germany, was the prime minister of Saarland, a small German state bordering France. She is seen as Merkel’s favourite – both have a calm and pragmatic style of politics, and it was Merkel who called Kramp-Karrenbauer to Berlin to be the CDU’s general secretary. While the other two candidates can be seen as antitheses to Merkel, Kramp-Karrenbauer’s election would most likely mean “more of the same.”
Her stances, including that on Russia, are far less unambiguous than those of Merz. She firmly believes Russia is making its breach of international law in Ukraine part of the state doctrine, that Putin is attempting to destabilize Europe, and that Russian disinformation campaigns are a daily danger.
At the same time, however, she calls for dialogue with Russia: “I’m decidedly in favor of making active use of those channels of communication we have with Russia,” she said in April 2018. She is of the opinion that a frank debate must be had with Russia regarding, for example, its support of the Syrian government, which uses chemical weapons. Despite this, Germany and the West should work on diplomatic solutions to Syria’s civil war together with Russia, she says.
But while her tone is soft, Kramp-Karrenbauer sees Germany being far closer to the United States than to Russia. She sees Berlin’s historic closeness to Washington as a guarantee of peace, freedom, and prosperity. And until Russia changes its conduct in eastern Ukraine, she believes Russia should not be readmitted to the G-8.
Jens Spahn
Spahn is the long-shot, with the support of a little more than 6 percent of Germans. The 38-year-old has long been known for his sharp tongue and talent for making polarizing statements – quite often against the sober political style of Merkel. For example, in 2012, he wrote on Facebook: “I’ve nearly had it with Ukraine. We shouldn’t let ourselves be blackmailed by regimes that blatantly disregard human rights.”
At the time, the then Ukrainian government under former President Viktor Yanukovych was angered by threats from the West to boycott the UEFA 2012 European Championship and by demands to free the imprisoned opposition politician Yulia Tymoshenko. Spahn’s comment was a response to the threat by the then first deputy of the Party of Regions Leonid Kozhara that German producers would suffer if sanctions were imposed on Ukraine.
Spahn frequently makes populist statements, be it about English speaking hipsters in Berlin, or about asylum seekers in Germany who do not work – despite the fact that in many cases they are not even allowed to work.
After the CDU’s poor performance in the last federal election, in September 2017 pressure from Merkel’s critics within the party was so strong that she took the openly gay Spahn into her cabinet as Health Minister. Since then, he has tried to reshape his image to one of a compassionate conservative capable of working productively with parliament.
He sees Russia as a factor of uncertainty and instability for Germany, against which the country had best prepare itself. He believes that Germany cannot always rely on the United States for its defense. He has frequently rebuked the social democrats, the CDU’s partners in the current grand coalition, for the overly Russia-friendly rhetoric of some of their politicians. He calls two-faced the SPD’s fueling of anti-American sentiment whilst it ignores Putin’s human rights abuses. He has also frequently attacked other leftist politicians and accused them of double standards for criticizing the United States while ignoring Russia’s conduct in Syria or Ukraine.
Spahn completed the American Council on Germany’s “Young Leader” program, which is connected to the Atlantik-Brücke, the same organisation headed by Spahn’s rival for the CDU’s leadership Merz. Spahn describes himself as a transatlanticist.
He has also shown support for reducing the dependence of Europe on Russian gas supplies by building alternative pipelines. In April 2018, when he was still Secretary of State in Finance Ministry, he wrote a letter to an influential member of parliament about a planned pipeline from Azerbaijan: “These gas deliveries are intended to make a significant contribution to securing a reliable gas supply to Europe and Germany.” While this does not equate to opposition to Nord Stream 2, at least it seems he is aware of the problem of relying on Russia for energy supplies .
Spahn has shown more of a tendency towards populism than either of the other candidates. According to a survey conducted by newspaper Die Welt, a sister publication of Bild, 58 percent of Germans want a closer relationship with Russia. It cannot be ruled out that he might one day try to please this group to win an election.
