As of: March 26, 2024, 7:56 p.m
By: Kathrin Braun
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Foreign expert Michael Roth is quitting politics because he is strangers to his socialites.
Are the SPD's Ukraine supporters crumbling away?
Munich – It was a Monday evening in April, when the war in Ukraine had been raging for less than seven weeks, when three German parliamentarians met secretly in Warsaw.
Hardly anyone knew at the time that Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP), Anton Hofreiter (Greens) and Michael Roth (SPD) wanted to travel from there together to Lviv in western Ukraine - they were the first high-ranking representatives of the Bundestag to do so have traveled to the war-torn country since Russia's attack.
The Chancellor was still hesitating and only decided to visit Kiev two months later.
At that time, Olaf Scholz explained that he didn't just want to travel to Ukraine for a photo shoot.
Today we know that he may have felt great pressure from his own party.
“When I traveled to the country shortly after the outbreak of war, some in the group didn’t even greet me,” says Michael Roth in an interview with “Stern”.
He felt “like a foreign body”.
“After that I’m out” – SPD celebrity withdraws from politics
The 53-year-old will leave politics because he no longer wants to.
“I’ll do it until the federal election,” says Roth, who has been a member of the Bundestag for 26 years.
“After that I’m out.” He “no longer has any bite” and feels an “inner distance” from the company.
Michael Roth © Philipp von Ditfurth
The foreign politician, who appealed for more weapons to Ukraine on numerous talk shows, has long since burned out.
In June 2022, he spoke in detail about his psychological exhaustion in a “Spiegel” portrait and announced a month-long break from politics.
So now forever.
The son of a mining family from a village in Hesse never had it easy.
“I was the guy with the father who liked to drink one too many,” he tells “Stern”.
“My childhood was never idyllic; I found it shameful.” Politics was a way out for him.
Feeling like being in a “refrigerator” – Roth became alienated from the SPD
That changed with the Ukraine war.
Roth, who describes himself as a “passionate social democrat” and once even wanted to become party leader, can no longer identify with the SPD.
Lately he has become more and more confused about the meetings.
“When the door to the parliamentary group hall opened, I had the impression that I was climbing into a refrigerator.” When he was not re-elected to the board at the party conference last December, there was cheering in the hall.
Today Roth sums it up: “Everything was shit that day.”
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However, not everyone in the SPD is happy about Roth's departure.
“It's a shame that he's quitting,” said Bavarian parliamentary group leader Florian von Brunn to our newspaper.
“Politics is hard.
This also means that sometimes you cannot find a majority for your views.”
The refrigerator comparison captures the mood in the party extremely well, especially since its freezer is causing a stir these days: Since parliamentary group leader Rolf Mützenich proposed “freezing” the war in the Bundestag, the Socialists have been sliding ever deeper into an identity crisis.
While the plenary minutes noted “applause from the SPD” (but also from the Left, BSW and AfD), SPD Defense Minister Boris Pistorius hastened to distance himself from Mützenich.
Juso boss Philipp Türmer also sided with the freeze critics.
Otherwise there are hardly any prominent SPD voices left who differentiate themselves from Mützenich.
Is Scholz following in Gerhard Schröder's footsteps with his Russia policy?
For many, the suspicion is growing that the SPD now wants to go into the three eastern elections as a “peace party” - with an Olaf Scholz in Gerhard Schröder's footsteps.
The speculation is fueled by the former Chancellor's praise for Scholz's Taurus no - even if the Chancellor, who equips Ukraine with almost everything except Taurus, is reluctant to be associated with his predecessor.
Just yesterday, in an interview on the occasion of his 80th birthday (he celebrated his 70th with Putin in St. Petersburg), the Kremlin friend emphasized that he does not regret any of his political decisions.
And today he still stands by his lobbying work with Russian energy companies.
With Roth, an anti-Schröder is now leaving the party: he was the first Social Democrat to bring up EU sanctions against the former Chancellor.
But that went too far for many in the party - including the Chancellor.
(Kathrin Braun)