So now former chancellor Gerhard Schröder has parted ways with the Russian oil company Rosneft and has thus distanced himself a bit from Putin's criminal regime.
It was a step that was overdue.
But why is he only going now?
In the SPD, there is actually only one judgment shared by everyone about their most difficult member: Schröder cannot be caught, by anyone.
He does what he wants.
After Butscha's crimes, he was able to give an interview in a good mood, in which he said that mea culpa wasn't his thing.
It is well known that money is Schröder's thing.
So does he just want to avoid being put on the EU sanctions list?
Schröder's SPD successor in the Chancellery, Olaf Scholz, recently decided that this was not necessary.
Or does Schröder know more than all of us?
In the interview with the New York Times, he said he could only imagine resigning from his Rosneft post if Russia cut off the gas to Europe.
The question remains how the SPD will emerge from this ups and downs.
You may now be spared an exhausting and lengthy process of expulsion from a party.
But the expulsion would not have been much more than a symbolic act anyway. It would have been a mistake to throw Schröder out of court as a representative of a misguided Russia policy and leave it at that.
Because Schröder was not alone.
And the SPD's Russia policy needs a new and stable foundation.