Operation Brandenburg

German ambassador in Moscow removed for being “uncritical”

Changes await the German diplomatic mission in Russia - recently the Hamburg weekly Der Spiegel reported on the impending replacement of Ambassador to Moscow Walter Jürgen Schmid. This news came less than a month after the first visit to the Russian capital by the new German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle.

Ambassador Schmid, 63, has served in his current position since July 2005. His appointment to Moscow came in the last months of Social Democratic Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's tenure as chancellor. Previously, under his leadership, Mr. Schmid worked for several years as the government commissioner for disarmament and arms control. In November 2005, after the elections to the Bundestag, Schröder resigned early, but the post of Foreign Minister in the renewed coalition cabinet went to the Social Democrats.

But in September 2009, after losing the next election, the Social Democratic Party of Germany went into parliamentary opposition, and the post of Foreign Minister went to the head of the Free Democrats Party, Guido Westerwelle. These changes predetermined the fate of Walter Jürgen Schmid, because as ambassador he acted in line with the Social Democratic policy towards Russia, which was distinguished by significant loyalty to its political leadership. As for the free democrats, their traditional political strong point is human rights.

An indicative episode was the visit of Guido Westerwelle to Moscow, when, during a meeting with representatives of civil society at the residence of the German Ambassador, one of the German television crews asked the German minister about the fate of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The question caused Mr. Westerwelle obvious displeasure. Indeed, the day before, during official Russian-German consultations, the topic of human rights played a secondary role, and Mr. Westerwelle himself agreed with the opinion of his Russian colleague Sergei Lavrov that such issues are resolved within the framework of legislation by an independent Russian court. It turned out that the German Embassy did not prepare the necessary information for the minister’s visit on human rights issues in Russia that were important for the new leadership of the Foreign Ministry.

After Minister Westerwelle’s trip to Moscow, the Federal Chancellor’s Office began to say that Ambassador Schmid was allegedly “too uncritical” of Russia. But his boss, Mr. Westerwelle, directly noted that in order to strengthen the partnership between Germany, Europe and Russia, “it is necessary to specifically influence the observance of law and order and human rights, which is the basis for open dialogue.” Yesterday, a representative of the German Foreign Ministry refused to answer a question about the prospect of disturbances at the German embassy in Moscow.

However, Der Spiegel has already named the most likely successor to the current ambassador - the Foreign Minister intends to send 59-year-old Ulrich Brandenburg (pictured) to Moscow. He is now Germany's permanent representative to NATO. At the same time, the diplomat has impressive experience in work related to Russia. In the 1970s, he studied Romance and Slavic philology, including at the Sorbonne in Paris. In the next decade, under the government of Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Mr. Brandenburg headed the German consulate in Leningrad for two years, and in 1986-1988 he worked at the German embassy in Moscow as first secretary. He then held various positions in the foreign policy department in Germany itself, and in 2001-2003 he worked as the government commissioner for Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Yuri Shpakov, Berlin