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The summer of 2026 has raised questions once again among politicians, diplomats, and academics about whether Germany might be about to dither on Russia. Last month, a drone attack on German soil seemed designed to coerce Germany back into business as usual. Earlier, there had been rumblings about two German ex-chancellors brokering a peace treaty between Kyiv and Moscow. Both Angela Merkel and Gerhard Schröder are living embodiments of the ill-reputed Ostpolitik, Germany’s tradition of pragmatic cooperation with the Kremlin over the heads of other Eastern European countries.
Is Germany getting ready for a reset with Russia, though? Not really. Berlin’s foreign policy is not likely to change in the foreseeable future. All mainstream parties, business leaders and the majority of the population remain deeply distrustful of Russia. The far-right and Kremlin-friendly Alternative for Germany (AfD), which promotes Ostpolitik as an issue of identity politics, faces formidable hurdles on its way to power. Meanwhile, the contours of a post-Atlantic German security policy are coming into view.
From Confrontation to Reconciliation?
In February 2022, Ostpolitik was dead in the water. After Russia’s tanks and planes stormed toward Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, the government of Olaf Scholz cut its ties with Moscow in a dramatic manner. Admittedly, the process that characterized the U-turn in German foreign policy was often half-hearted and inconsistent. Its eventual results, however, are clear. Germany effectively tied itself to the Biden administration’s policy on Ukraine and, in doing so, became the second-largest military supporter of Kyiv. Scholz, the one-time pacifist, now posed for pictures with tanks and rushed through a decision to deploy U.S. missiles in Germany — a policy that he had demonstrated against in the early 1980s.
Things look rather different in 2026. Scholz and Biden are gone. The Trump administration has treated Germany with contempt, sparking conflicts over tariffs, Greenland, and Germany’s position on Ukraine. Given this context, it might only be logical to expect Germany to return to some form of rapprochement with Russia. Germany is now under pressure from the United States, China, and Russia at the same time. This is an extremely difficult position to be in for a middle power dependent on global trade and international institutions.
Despite his personal diplomatic efforts in both Washington and Beijing, the new German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has few tangible achievements to show. The fear that Germany’s struggling economy will be further squeezed by confrontational maneuvers by the two superpowers has been confirmed by the U.S. attack on Iran and by China’s ongoing support of Vladimir Putin. From this perspective, it would not be out of line to ask if something could possibly be achieved with rather than against Moscow. Some hope that a resumption of trade with Russia might kickstart the German economy or at least diversify its energy mix. As the biggest supporter of Ukraine and the most powerful country in the European Union, Berlin might have a few bargaining chips to use in possible negotiations.
There are also important domestic forces at play. Merz’s center-right/center-left coalition is embattled and deeply unpopular. The far-right AfD now reliably leads the national polls by a significant margin — and presents a distinctly Kremlin-friendly outlook. When Volodymyr Zelensky visits the Bundestag, the AfD leaves the room. In 2024, the AfD decided that Russia had won the war and there was now no need to condemn the invasion. The party has consistently opposed military aid for Ukraine and sanctions on Russia and argues that the Nord Stream pipeline needs to be revived as a way of securing German economic interests.
The coming weeks will present an important stress test, as the country is heading into elections in three of its 16 federal states: Berlin, and then the East German regions of Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The AfD is expected to score big, even in Berlin. This is because the traditionally more Russia-friendly East of the country is the party’s stronghold. For the very first time, it may even end up in state government.
Why a Reset with Russia Remains Unlikely
Regardless of all these favorable circumstances for Ostpolitik, a “reset” with Russia remains unlikely in the foreseeable future. Despite its growing presence in political rhetoric and the occasional journalistic speculation, Ostpolitik has little traction in key political and business networks.
First, there are very few Ostpolitiker left in Berlin. While the Greens have adopted an Atlanticism that would have made Konrad Adenauer proud, the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) purged its last Russia doves from its front-of-house team in 2022. Even in the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), once a bastion of Ostpolitik, there are only a small number of dissenters left on the sidelines. While attempts to expel Putin’s friend Schröder from the party have failed on procedural grounds, his continuing loyalty to the Kremlin still makes him something of a pariah.
Second, the AfD — the only relevant political party open to returning to business with Russia — is unlikely to form a government at the national level any time soon. A general election is not planned before 2029, and things may not improve for the AfD even after that. Merz’s CDU, some of whose policies overlap with those of the AfD, is still unwilling to go into coalition with the far-right party. Even if the so-called “firewall” fell, the CDU would not abandon its deep Atlanticism. This means that the AfD would, as things stand, need to win an outright majority of the seats to change course on Russia, something that has only once occurred at the federal level. The AfD’s current polling, at 27–29 percent, is significantly below this mark.
Third, the once-mighty infrastructure sustaining German-Russian relations is now more dead than dormant. Not only have key organizations such as the Petersburg Dialogue been wound down, but the all-important German Eastern Business Association (Ost-Ausschuss) seems to have redirected its efforts elsewhere, too. After all, why do business with Russia if you have Poland, the Czech Republic, and — yes — Ukraine? Although there were news reports in 2026 that showed German companies back at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, it soon turned out that some of these firms were not really all that German and none of them were big players.
The crucial Nord Stream pipeline network, Ostpolitik’s economic centerpiece, is unlikely to be revived as long as Putin remains in the Kremlin. And this is, it should be added, regardless of whether a German court establishes that it was indeed the Ukrainians who sabotaged the pipeline in September 2022. As Schröder likes to remind his listeners, one strand of Nord Stream 2 is still functional even now and, technically, it would be possible to repair the rest. But it is difficult to imagine a government that would muster the political will to allow this. Germans remember all too well that eventually they did have to foot their energy bill, and it did not come cheap: The 2022 bailout of energy companies and customers cost 200 billion euros. Their country has since proven that it can live without Nord Stream.
Finally, German public opinion shows little appetite for collaboration with Moscow. Especially in the former West Germany, home to more than four-fifths of the overall electorate, the Kremlin is not considered a trustworthy partner. A poll for the public broadcaster ARD shows that in 2026 a mere 12 percent of Germans view Russia as reliable, a figure that has remained virtually unchanged since the 2022 invasion.
The escalating sabotage campaigns on German soil, including the August 2026 failed drone attack on Leipzig/Halle airport with an increasing trail of evidence linking it to Russia, are not likely to change the balance of forces. If the aim behind Russian actions is to scare German authorities away from supporting Ukraine, the result appears to be rather the opposite, as demonstrated by the decisions to boost anti-drone defenses or to give more power to its spy agencies.
Ostpolitik Is Now Identity Politics
For all the skepticism concerning the prospects of Ostpolitik as a foreign policy strategy, it has been successfully revived as a form of identity politics. Indeed, Ostpolitik is flexible enough to appeal to broad and unlikely alliances. It can be claimed not just by the far right, as it is obsessed with “national interests,” but also by some parts of the left who have continued to call for “dialogue” and “de-escalation.”
What these disparate voices have in common is a rejection of what they see as the liberal consensus on supporting Ukraine. Rather than providing a genuine alternative, Ostpolitik functions chiefly as an oppositional rhetoric which treats the support for Ukraine with much the same contempt as it does the green transition or, indeed, civil rights. For the established parties, in turn, the loud and ritualised rejection of Ostpolitik is a way of distancing themselves from the AfD, as well as washing their hands of what many see as one of Germany’s biggest foreign policy mistakes.
Put simply, relations with Russia are now subsumed under identity politics. This logic is likely to play a role in the crucial upcoming regional elections in East Germany in which the AfD is looking to win big. But, in the longer term, the AfD has a problem: Its current position on Russia is likely to repel West Germany’s conservative voters, whom the party will need to win over if it ever wants to govern in Berlin.
The Real Problem is Washington
The centrist political mainstream faces a conundrum, too — and one that is much more relevant for the conduct of foreign policy than the remnants of Ostpolitik. What it lacks is a convincing strategy for a hostile “new” world that was so dramatically announced by Scholz in relation to Russia but which in fact involves the actions of Trump’s America and Netanyahu’s Israel as much as those of Putin.
This strategic and intellectual vacuum is largely filled by what one might call zombie Atlanticism — a nostalgic mixture of Cold War militarism and post-Cold War liberalism, built around the idea of a Euro-Atlantic or Western civilization united by shared values and common enemies. In this line of reasoning, Germany should still act mainly as a pillar of this broader “community of destiny.”
Different camps within the established parties can well relate to this reborn civilizationism. To the cosmopolitan internationalists, it gives a safeguard against the spectre of German nationalism. To Germany’s most ardent NATO hawks, it invokes the “red scare” of the 1980s and prepares the ground for neo-Reaganite arguments about peace-through-strength. To the liberal idealists, it provides the safe recourse to a Manichean struggle between democracies and autocracies.
The problem is that the notion of such a Euro-Atlantic civilizational bond is entirely alien to the current U.S. administration. Rather than indulging in nostalgic rituals that reaffirm allied traditions, the White House and the Pentagon are keen on belittling, bullying, and threatening their European partners, Germany very much included. There is a large, U.S.-shaped hole in the middle of the Euro-Atlantic civilization that the Germans would like to defend. Most in the Berlin bubble are aware of this but seem unable to translate it into coherent policy. For now, the German approach is to embrace zombie Atlanticism, in which the Euro-Atlantic community is treated as less-than-alive, but more-than-dead.
While there are laudable and logical calls for more independent European defense, Germany is at the same time locking itself deep into long-term dependencies on U.S. military technologies, such as with the F-35 aircraft deal. In contrast, joint high-profile defense projects with France have stalled. Deep skepticism toward the U.S. administration is accompanied by desperate attempts to curry Trump’s favor, as demonstrated by Merz’s subservient demeanor whenever he visits the White House.
Trump’s tirades about tariffs, NATO, Iran, and Greenland have made it increasingly difficult to have it both ways. The German foreign policy establishment is now under growing pressure to come up with an elaborate foreign policy approach for an era defined by a United States that is sometimes uninterested and at other times outright hostile.
This absence of precisely such a strategy from Merz’s centrist government poses a much more menacing danger to Europe than the remnants of Ostpolitik in public discourse. Those worried about Berlin’s looming rapprochement with Moscow can rest assured that Ostpolitik will remain dormant unless the AfD clears some very formidable hurdles.
Post-Atlanticism
What should a German post-Atlanticist strategy look like? It would need to begin with the realization that Germany is too small to be a major power on its own, yet big enough to exercise hegemony crudely or trigger security competition with France or Poland. German power thus needs to remain tied up in Europe, not least so it can withstand a period of AfD rule, unlikely as that may be in the foreseeable future.
Instead of calling for cuts, Berlin should make resources available for the European Union and strengthen its own embeddedness within Europe’s security architecture. Germany could use the renegotiations of the E.U. budget to make way for joint E.U. borrowing or taxation, ensuring a durable income for the European Union’s budget. Berlin’s near-unconditional support for Israel has cost its soft power dearly, so there are limits on what it can achieve in the short term, particularly beyond Europe. Still, Germany could begin by developing a network of loose, shifting and inclusive global alliances with partners like Canada, Japan, Brazil, or India, with whom it shares a stake in multilateralism. Eventually, a Zeitenwende in its Middle Eastern policy might open other doors.
Most urgently, Berlin needs autonomy from the United States and to be willing to endure confrontation with Washington to achieve this, whether under Trump or his successor. This means active step-by-step efforts to reduce its dependencies, especially in the critical areas of defense, technology, or finances. Germany could make an agreement on novel E.U. budget resources conditional on their being spent in ways explicitly designed to bolster E.U. autonomy, such as research, development, and procurement of “made in European Union” solutions.
The build-up of German and E.U. military and technological capacities, some of which are already on the way, should not be guided by the fantasy of constructing a European power bloc on par with the United States, China, or Russia. The aim should be more modest: to avoid becoming a plaything in the games of adversarial great powers.
Ian Klinke is an associate professor at the University of Oxford. He has interviewed key figures within the Ostpolitik complex and has published extensively on German geopolitics. He is the author of Life, Earth, Colony: Friedrich Ratzel’s Necropolitical Geography (2023) and The International Political Thought of the Radical Right (2027, with J.F. Drolet). He occasionally writes for outlets such as The Conversation, Jacobin, Al Jazeera, and Merkur.
Jakub Eberle is an associate professor at Charles University and senior researcher at Peace Research Centre Prague. He has published extensively on German foreign policy, including International Theory and German Foreign Policy (2022, eds. with Alister Miskimmon) and Discourse and Affect in Foreign Policy: Germany and the Iraq War (2019). His commentaries have appeared in Foreign Policy, Politico, and openDemocracy.
Image: President Of Ukraine via Wikimedia Commons
