RUSSIA`S ROAD BACK RUNS THROUGH BERLIN / GEOPOLITICAL FUTURES

Russia’s Road Back Runs Through Berlin

Back-channel negotiations show that Germany, not the U.S., will determine the terms of Russia's postwar reintegration.

By: Geopolitical Futures

By Andrew Ryvkin

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the media has focused more on Russia’s negotiations with the United States than with the European Union. 

The White House, regardless of its occupant, has been portrayed as the Kremlin’s only Western counterpart in this war. 

But that view is more reminiscent of the Cold War than of the reality on the ground. 

It is the EU that shares a border with Russia; it is EU sanctions that have hurt Russia’s economy the most; and it is Europe that is Ukraine’s key ally. 

Even if a ceasefire is reached, these realities will remain. 

Moscow therefore has a fundamental interest in reaching an understanding with the European Union. 

That is why Russia has been engaged in back-channel diplomacy with the bloc, specifically with Germany.

Moscow downplays the extent to which EU sanctions have disrupted the Russian economy, even as Europe froze hundreds of billions of euros in Russian assets and drastically reduced its purchases of Russian hydrocarbons. 

Even with the war in its fifth year, Russia’s reorientation toward China has not proved as profitable as its trade with the EU once was. 

According to China’s General Administration of Customs, Russia-China trade totaled $228 billion in 2025. 

By comparison, Russia’s trade with the EU in 2021, before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, equaled $282 billion. 

When it comes to Russia’s postwar return to the global stage, the EU has the decisive vote over the future of Russia’s frozen assets, the country’s integration into the global banking system and, no less importantly, access to European markets. 

Moscow understands that if it ever wants to regain access to those assets, it needs a clear channel to the EU and, specifically, to Germany, the bloc’s largest economy. 

French and German thinking about back-channel negotiations with Russia has changed as the war has dragged on. 

Early on, many officials believed that speaking directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin could influence his decisions – hence the numerous calls between Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron in early 2022. 

German and, to an extent, French negotiators then confronted a central question, one tied more to Putin himself than to sanctions or developments on the battlefield: Would the Russian president end the war in Ukraine without achieving his maximalist goals if it was in Russia’s long-term interest to do so? 

Members of the foreign policy establishment in Paris and Berlin came to different conclusions. 

France tried to initiate contact with Russia on an intergovernmental level, while Germany held out little hope that negotiations with Putin would produce meaningful results and instead started looking for unofficial channels of communication with Moscow.

Germany’s options were few and far between. 

There was no clear anti-war faction within the Russian elite, since openly taking such a position would all but guarantee expulsion from it. 

Nor was there much point in engaging Russia’s security services. 

Though it wields considerable power, it remains firmly pro-war and deeply anti-Western, and so far has been willing to engage only on issues such as prisoner exchanges. 

Berlin was left searching for people close to Putin who still had his ear but were seen as more rational than the Russian president himself.

According to people familiar with unofficial German-Russian negotiations, Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich has been identified as one such figure. 

The expectation has never been that he could persuade Putin to change course on fundamental issues such as territory or the war itself. 

Rather, his value lies in his ability to keep lines of communication open and to help with narrowly defined humanitarian issues.

Berlin and Moscow have maintained other back channels as well. 

Since at least early 2024, Germany has held a series of meetings in Baku and Abu Dhabi involving former German politicians and Kremlin-connected figures. 

The meetings are formally devoted to discussing the possible revival of the Petersburg Dialogue, the German-Russian forum founded by Gerhard Schroeder and Putin in 2001 and officially terminated by Berlin in 2021. 

The German delegation is led by officials from former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet and former members of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. 

None currently hold government office, but all maintain extensive networks in Germany and across Europe.

The Russian side has included Viktor Zubkov, a former prime minister and chairman of Russian gas giant Gazprom’s supervisory board, as well as Valery Fadeyev, head of Russia’s Human Rights Council and an adviser to Putin, and Alexey Gromyko. 

These figures are not as media-friendly as Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s Kyiv-born, Harvard-educated envoy to U.S. President Donald Trump who regularly appears in American media, but they carry significantly more political weight inside Russia. 

Zubkov was Putin’s deputy in St. Petersburg, where the two became close friends, and he remains one of the president’s longtime confidants. 

Gromyko heads the Institute of Europe at the Russian Academy of Sciences, which advises the Kremlin on policy toward the European Union.

Putin has signaled that he is unwilling to compromise on territory and remains committed to continuing the war, at least to the point of capturing the Donbas region. 

If captured, the region, while strategically insignificant, would allow Putin to sell a victory at home and possibly create a political crisis in Ukraine – something that would aid Russia in its efforts to capture the rest of the country. 

Putin is pursuing this goal even as Russia’s economic situation becomes more precarious and Ukraine grows increasingly successful in striking targets deep inside Russia. 

Still, from the Kremlin’s perspective, a delegation that includes Putin’s close friend, one of his advisers and one of Russia’s leading experts on Europe sends a signal that Moscow is taking the talks seriously, even if they cannot immediately address the core issue of the war.

Both sides understand that the war eventually will end, and both sides will need a stable line of communication to restore at least some degree of normalcy in security and economic affairs. 

From the European perspective, Putin’s turn to China is driven by necessity rather than strategy. 

Many European decision-makers believe that Russia remains structurally oriented toward Europe and that maintaining Russia’s increasingly subordinate relationship with China for years to come runs against Moscow’s long-term interests. 

Putin has said on more than one occasion that Russia is interested in resuming gas exports to Germany and that all that’s needed is a political decision in Berlin. 

Alternative for Germany, the right-wing German party that’s considered friendly to Russia, has said that, should it come to power, it would restore the gas pipelines.

If a settlement in Ukraine is eventually reached, these back channels are likely to expand rather than disappear. 

Governments will continue to handle negotiations over territory and security, but business leaders, bankers and former officials could become increasingly important in discussions over sanctions, frozen Russian assets, investment, reconstruction and the restoration of commercial ties. 

That makes preserving these relationships worthwhile for both Moscow and Berlin, as broader negotiations eventually become possible.

Andrew Ryvkin is a journalist and analyst who writes for Air Mail and The Atlantic on Russia and U.S.-Russia relations. He previously worked in Russian politics and media, and has lectured at universities including Harvard and Yale on the Kremlin’s political messaging.