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BERLIN — Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has been nominated to hitch the board of administrators at Gazprom, the state-owned Russian vitality firm behind the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
Gazprom revealed an official listing of nominees on Friday, saying the names could be voted on in June throughout a shareholders’ assembly in Saint Petersburg.
The information got here per week after Schröder — a long-time good friend of Vladimir Putin and who holds senior positions at Nord Stream and Rosneft — made headlines by saying on his podcast that Ukraine, not Russia, was “saber-rattling.”
Schröder was mocked for his feedback from inside Germany, which itself has been criticized for a perceived softness towards Putin at a time when Ukraine stays surrounded by an enormous — and nonetheless rising — mass of Russian troops and weapons.
Schröder’s Gazprom nomination angered his opponents, with the chair of the protection committee in parliament, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, suggesting he needs to be stripped of the pension he receives as an ex-chancellor.
“It is time to begin fascinated with withdrawing Gerhard Schröder’s allowance as a former chancellor,” Strack-Zimmermann, who’s from the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), wrote on Twitter. “He harms the nation he’s meant to serve and willingly accepts greater than good pay for it from an autocrat.”
Stefan Müller, of the Bavarian Christian Social Union, agreed, writing on social media: “Schröder will get a promotion from bosom buddy Putin. Throughout occasion traces, we should always speak about stripping him of his official endowment as former chancellor.”
“He’s damaging Germany,” Müller added.
Undeterred, Schröder on Friday afternoon, through the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, took to LinkedIn to criticize those that have boycotted the occasion over Beijing’s human rights file, saying that China is Germany’s “most essential gross sales market.”
“Anybody who needs to place stress on China with boycott calls for and moralizing overseas coverage is enjoying a harmful sport,” he wrote.
Present German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will depart for Washington on Sunday for talks with U.S. President Joe Biden and is scheduled to go to Kyiv and Moscow per week later.
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