Why Germany's Chancellor is pushing for peace in Ukraine

In an interview with German TV on September 7, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called for a push toward diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine. “Now is the time to arrive at peace from this state of war,” Scholz said. He added that a “new peace conference” should be organized, and one, at which, this time, Russia should be present as one of the belligerents. Significantly, Scholz asserted that the idea has the backing of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The last “peace summit” was held in Switzerland in June and failed to make any headway towards a ceasefire as Russia was excluded event.

Scholz’s remarks mark a potentially significant shift in Germany’s position which, until now, has been in lockstep with the rest of the NATO and EU about the need to support Ukraine until its full victory and Russia’s defeat are achieved, however vaguely or ambitiously both are defined. The only visible dissent came from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who launched his own “peace mission” at the outset of Hungary’s rotating presidency in the EU Council in July 2024. That mission took him to Kyiv, Moscow, Beijing and Washington, as well as Florida’s Mar-a-Lago, to see the U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump who has also spoken repeatedly about the need to end the war in Ukraine.

Orban, however, was ostracized by his counterparts in the Council and the Brussels establishment, who accused him of cozying up to Russian President Vladimir Putin. There were even calls for sanctions, such as boycotting the bloc’s meetings under Budapest’s rotating presidency of the EU.

More thoughtful voices pointed out that the real issue was not Orban’s “peace mission,” but rather the fact that he was the only voice in the EU calling for a negotiated settlement of the war. Researchers from the German Social-Democratic Party (SPD)-aligned Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES) deplored the “international diplomatic vacuum” which enabled Orban to play the peacemaker role.

Of the current EU leaders, Scholz would be the best positioned to fill that vacuum. For one, unlike Hungary — a relatively small Central European nation in need of the EU’s cash handouts and often at odds with Brussels over domestic governance issues — Germany is still the EU’s economic powerhouse. No serious pan-European effort can prosper without Germany being on board.

A second key factor is that while Orban has increasingly built his political career as a national-conservative challenger to the EU status quo and is aligned with the “Patriots of Europe,” a Europe-wide network of similar far-right political parties, such as Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France, Scholz is the very embodiment of the centrist consensus that has ruled Western Europe since the end of the WWII. Apart from his fellow center-left Social Democrats, it includes center-right Christian Democrats and centrist liberals. So, both by the country and the political tradition he represents, Scholz has far more political clout to pursue diplomacy than Orban or, in fact, any other senior European leader.

Scholz, unlike hawkish French President Emmanuel Macron (with whom he gets along poorly), has always been a reluctant warrior. Now, however, German politics is pushing him to embrace the cause of peace and diplomacy.

The recent local elections in two Eastern German states, Thuringia and Saxony, delivered resounding success to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the new, left-conservative Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), led by a former leader of the far-left Die Linke party. Both parties outperformed all the members of the current ruling coalition in Berlin — Scholz’s Social Democrats, the Greens, and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP).

Two core issues that are common to the identity of both the AfD and BSW are their anti-immigration stances (although AfD is far more inflammatory about the issue than the BSW) and opposition to the war in Ukraine — the top issue for the BSW, shared also by the AfD. Concerns over the weak economy and how it is impacted by the war are also shared by the voters of both parties, but not only by them.

The AfD and BSW may have made particularly deep inroads in eastern Germany, but the prospect of a broader national surge clearly worries Scholz as Germany approaches general elections in a year’s time. He cannot afford to be outperformed by either the AfD or the BSW. His coalition has already made concessions on immigration, with Nancy Faeser, his Social Democrat interior minister, announcing new checks on the borders (at the risk of violating the rules governing the EU Schengen free travel zone).

Escalating migration controls, however, may not be enough to appease the voters. Hence, Scholz may feel it is time to also address the growing concerns over the continuing war in Ukraine. Certainly, the internal political climate in Germany may be shifting after the shocking claims that Poland, an EU and NATO ally and one of the Kyiv’s most fervent supporters, has reportedly sabotaged investigations into the blowing up of the of the Nord Stream pipeline two years ago, which supplied gas from Russia to Germany. German investigators believe that the explosions themselves — a major act of industrial sabotage against Germany — were carried out by a citizen of Ukraine, a country Germany staunchly supported ever since it was invaded by Russia.

The political context thus may be favoring Scholz’s pitch as a “peace chancellor” for next year’s elections. If, however, he is serious about not only talking the talk but also walking the walk, he faces huge challenges. As the Riga-based dissident Russian journalist Leonid Ragozin put it, “bridging the gap between insanely optimistic expectations induced by war lobby groups in order to get more war and the dire situation Ukraine finds itself in is going to be an uphill struggle.”

Moreover, while Putin himself may have opened up somewhat to the idea of talks, Russia, which has made progress on the eastern front in recent months, may push for additional land grabs in Ukraine in order to strengthen its bargaining power before would-be negotiations. Every new Russian military crime, like targeting vital civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, particularly in winter, will doubtless be held against whatever peace plans Scholz may envisage, not least by his own coalition partners from the Green Party, and certainly most of the German media. And then, there is the question of Scholz’s own political future — if his party keeps losing local elections (the next are scheduled in the other eastern state of Brandenburg on September 22), his replacement as the SPD’s candidate for next year’s elections could be a possibility.

Despite these formidable obstacles, ending the fighting and preventing a potentially catastrophic escalation remain the key vital objective — something the German public seems to be fully aware. It is up to the leaders like Chancellor Scholz, or his potential successor, to rise to the occasion and lead their country, and Europe, towards peace.