I think you can explain all this nicely with: "SD leader Gerhardt Schröder immediately joined as a Russian oil lobbyist after leaving politics". Greens were us

I think you can explain all this nicely with: "SD leader Gerhardt Schröder immediately joined as a Russian oil lobbyist after leaving politics". Greens were useful idiots to Gerhardt's plan to power Germany's economy using cheap natural gas from then-nascent Putin regime in Russia. It's arguable he wasn't wrong in fact, if you look at the fact that Germany drove a lot of the EU economy for the past 2 decades, he's probably feeling quite justified in selling his country's energy sector out to Russia.