Scholtz: Germany Would Resume Trade With Russia If It Ends War

While Germany is contemplating new sanctions over the war against Ukraine, Chancellor Olaf Scholtz said this week that his country would resume trade with Russia if it ended the conflict.

"At the moment, the relationships that we have are being scaled back, scaled back, scaled back. Now we are tightening the sanctions. Everyone needs to know that," the German news outlet NTV reported Scholz saying in Berlin Monday evening before the German Economic Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations. "But a Russia that ends the war ... also needs the chance to start economic cooperation again in other times."

He said that the time to resume trade is "not now," but it is "very important that we make preparations for this time."

The chancellor warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin's current course of action, in addition to destroying lives and "many places" in Ukraine, is also "destroying Russia's future," and will eventually have "to justify [the war] to his own country and his own people."

German sanctions and bans on Russian oil imports have left in the country in a precarious position relying on Russia for more than half of its gas needs, leading to a major rift among top left-wing Die Link Party members, the Guardian reported in September.

Sahra WagenKnecht, that party's leader, accused Scholtz's government of "launching an unprecedented economic war against our most important energy supplier."

"Yes, of course the war in Ukraine is a crime," Wagenknecht said at the time. "But how dumb is the idea that we can punish Putin by pushing millions of German families into poverty and destroy our economy while Gazprom makes record profits?"

Breitbart reported that Scholtz's comments come as other Western nations appear to be moving toward trying to broker peace between Ukraine and Russia, which Scholtz has said could include "re-vamping Cold War policies."

While Germany and others may want to try and aid a peaceful resolution to the war, Russian officials say a deal will not come before the end of the year.

"The Ukrainian side will have to take into account the realities that emerged lately," Breitbart reported Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying Tuesday, calling a chance for a resolution "out of the question."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's government has taken a hard line on negotiations, demanding Russia return regions of the country it "annexed," pay reparations for the invasion and prosecute war criminals, the report said.

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