Cold War past shapes complex Merkel-Putin relationship

By Noah Barkin

BERLIN Fri Mar 7, 2014 4:40am EST

1 of 4. Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) and German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrive for a jointnews conference in Moscow's Kremlin in this November 16, 2012 file picture. Unlike presidents inWashington, the German chancellor has never harboured any illusions about the former Sovietagent, nor hopes that she might change him.

Credit: Reuters/Maxim Shemetov/Files

BERLIN (Reuters) - After one of her first encounters with Vladimir Putin in 2002, Angela Merkeljoked to aides that she had passed the "KGB test" by staring straight into his eyes without avertingher gaze.

Unlike presidents in Washington - George W. Bush claimed to have gotten a glimpse of Putin's souland Barack Obama promised to "reset" relations with Russia - the German chancellor has neverharbored any illusions about the former Soviet agent, nor hopes that she might change him.

It is this hard-nosed realism, born of Merkel's own experience growing up in a Soviet garrison townin East Germany and reinforced over a turbulent 14-year relationship with Putin, that has earned herrespect in the Kremlin and thrust her into the potentially risky role of chief mediator in the Ukrainecrisis.

When Merkel and Putin interact it is a clash of polar opposite world views, aides to the chancellorsay.

For Merkel, the physicist, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was a godsend that launched herextraordinary career as a politician.

For Putin, who was living in the East German city of Dresden at the time, it was a calamity that ledwithin two short years to the collapse of the Soviet Union - an event the Russian leader hasdescribed as the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.

But despite different outlooks, Merkel and Putin, born less than two years apart, speak each other'slanguage - literally and figuratively.

Merkel, a fan of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, won a trip to Moscow as a teenager for her mastery of theRussian language.

Putin's favorite subject in school was German, which he perfected during his half decade as a KGBofficer in Dresden, later sending his daughters to the German school in Moscow.

On Merkel's first trip to Moscow as chancellor, the two leaders conversed in their native tongueswith translators present, but found themselves interjecting repeatedly to correct the interpreters.

Aides say their conversations follow the same pattern to this day.

"They have been working together for over a decade," said Alexander Rahr, head of the German-Russian forum in Berlin. "It hasn't always been smooth, but Putin knows Merkel better and respectsher more than the other leaders. He's never had a good relationship with Obama."

"ALWAYS A BATTLE"

Since the overthrow of Ukraine's pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich last month and Putin'sdecision to respond by tightening Russia's grip on Crimea, the autonomous southern region ofUkraine, the two leaders have talked on the phone roughly half a dozen times.

The conversations have not been easy, according to German sources.

Putin speaks a lot, sometimes endlessly. At times emotional and angry, he tries to bully with a mix ofgenuine and calculated outrage. The reserved Merkel waits patiently for the right time to make herpoints.

"It is always exhausting, always a battle - intense," one senior German official told Reuters.

In his 2013 biography of Merkel, Stefan Kornelius likened them to an old married couple who knowall of each other's tricks and can anticipate what they are going to say next.

Merkel has described her conversations with Putin as challenging tests for her own arguments. Shefeels that she cannot afford to show any weakness.

In a conversation with the White House on Sunday that followed a chat with Putin, she reportedlytold Obama that the Russian leader appeared to be "in another world", out of touch with reality.

In public, Merkel took care not to criticize Putin too loudly in the first weeks of the Ukraine crisis,fearing it would backfire and make the Russian leader harden his positions.

That changed last weekend when an unusually tough statement from her office said she had accusedPutin in a phone call of breaching international law with his "unacceptable intervention" in Crimea.

On Thursday in Brussels, she said the EU would follow the United States in introducing visa bansand asset freezes unless Putin moved quickly towards a negotiated settlement on Ukraine.

The new tone was a reminder of the different world views in a relationship that is based firmly onstrategic interests rather than friendship.

DOG INCIDENT

In 2005, Merkel defeated the Russian's close ally Gerhard Schroeder, who had once referred toPutin as a "flawless democrat". Within weeks of leaving office, Schroeder took a job as boardchairman of Nord Stream, the pipeline majority-owned by Russian gas monopoly Gazprom.

On her first visit to Moscow as chancellor she made a point of inviting human rights campaignersand opposition figures to a reception at the German embassy, something Schroeder would neverhave done.

A year later, when Merkel paid a visit to the president's Black Sea residence in Crimea, Putininfuriated the Germans by allowing his big black labrador Koni to bound into the room whilecameras were running, ignoring warnings from protocol that the chancellor has a fear of dogs.

More recently, the two clashed at an exhibition at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg,which included German art seized by the Soviets at the end of World War Two. In a tense exchangeat the opening last June, Merkel demanded the works be returned to Germany, only to be rebuffedby Putin.

Amid the sparring, Merkel has also sided with Putin at key moments, bolstering her credibility inMoscow as an honest broker.

At a NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008, Merkel refused to bow to pressure from Bush and otherleaders to put Georgia and Ukraine on track for membership in the western military alliance, a movethe German leader knew would infuriate Putin.

She also sided with Russia in abstaining from the 2011 U.N.vote authorizing intervention in Libya and pleased Putinwith her sharp public criticism of the United States lastyear following reports the National Security Agency hadmonitored her mobile phone.

"What is important for Putin is what Merkel thinks, whatChina thinks and what the CIS countries think," a seniorRussian security source told Reuters, dismissing the largelysymbolic measures unveiled by Obama on Thursday ashaving zero impact on the Russian leader.

Still, even members of Merkel's entourage believe that herability to sway Putin is limited. In the Ukraine crisis, theysay, the Russian leader's behavior has been drivenprimarily by domestic considerations.

By embracing the role of mediator, Merkel is running a big risk. She has urged western partners togive Putin more time before punishing Moscow with really punitive economic sanctions.

This stance that reflects German fears of the geopolitical consequences of an isolated Russia asmuch as it does concern about its business interests and energy ties. Germany gets over a third of itsoil and gas from Russia and more than 6,000 German firms are active in the country.

But if Putin refuses to follow her advice on pursuing a negotiated solution to the Ukraine crisis andconsolidates Russian control of Crimea in the days ahead, she runs the risk of looking soft and naive.

"Merkel's chances of influencing Putin are overstated," said Stefan Meister of the European Councilon Foreign Relations.

"She has a relationship with him, there is a certain trust and he listens to her, but there are limits towhat impact that might have," he said. "Putin has a very clear strategic goal in Crimea and he is notgoing to be persuaded by Germany."

(Additional reporting by Stephen Brown, Andreas Rinke and Lidia Kelly; Writing by Noah Barkin;Editing by Stephen Brown and Giles Elgood)

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