German-Russian relations at freezing point

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, ended the decades-long energy and business partnership between Moscow and Berlin, begun in the early 2000s under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of the SPD and later Angela Merkel of the CDU, with Vladimir Putin as their Russian counterpart. Even the 2014 annexation of Crimea did not halt the relationship; the Nord Stream 2 pipeline agreement was signed that year despite warnings from other European countries and the US that it would give Russia leverage. Amid the freeze in official ties, Germany's far-right AfD is now calling for a normalization of relations with Russia.