The criticism was unanimous.

Finally, Frank-Walter Steinmeier was snubbed by the president of a country with whom he wanted to express his solidarity.

But Volodymyr Zelensky did not want to see the German head of state.

The Federal President wanted to travel to Kyiv on Wednesday with the presidents of Poland and the three Baltic states, but they left without him.

Markus Wehner

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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The SPD, in particular, reacted harshly to their former party politician being uninvited.

He expects "that Ukrainian representatives adhere to a minimum of diplomatic conventions and do not interfere unduly in our country's domestic politics," said parliamentary group leader Rolf Mützenich.

Foreign policy expert Nils Schmid found the cancellation "more than annoying".

The fact that Kyiv is inviting Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the same time is “political gossip”.

Playing chancellor off against federal president, "that doesn't work at all".

Scholz himself remained a little more reserved.

It would have been good to receive Steinmeier, he said.

The invitation was "somewhat irritating," said the Chancellor, who left open whether he himself would travel to Kyiv.

Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) also regretted the cancellation.

But why did Steinmeier suffer so badly in Kyiv?

It is worth taking a closer look at his Russia policy.

Steinmeier entered public politics in 2005 after Gerhard Schröder lost the federal election.

The electoral loser, who found it hard to get over losing his office to the CDU woman Angela Merkel, pulled off a coup when it came to filling ministerial posts in the first grand coalition under Merkel.

Schröder's best man

He pushed through the man who had been his closest confidante for many years as foreign minister.

Steinmeier, head of the chancellery since 1999 but not a minister, was Schröder's Mister Efficiency, the gray eminence in the chancellery who stole everything for the head of government.

Last but not least, he had stalked a project that was particularly close to Schröder's heart: the Nord Stream Baltic Sea pipeline, which was intended to bring gas directly from Russia to Germany, bypassing the Ukraine.

Only ten days before the Bundestag elections, the construction of this gas route was agreed in the presence of Chancellor Schröder and Russia's President Vladimir Putin.

Steinmeier smoothed things out on several visits to Moscow and met Putin's confidante Dmitry Medvedev, then Deputy Prime Minister and head of the Gazprom supervisory board.

Schröder, with the election defeat in mind, had agreed on a personal coup with Putin.

Just two months after the election, it became known that the ex-chancellor would become a member of the supervisory board of the company that is building the natural gas pipeline.