The end of the Petersburg dialogue is not a reason for mourning.

With its formal dissolution, a long-overdue line has been drawn under an imitation of civil society contacts that has done more harm than good for years.

The basic idea of ​​this format made sense a good twenty years ago: an institutional framework should be created to promote dialogue between the societies of Russia and Germany, give it political attention and make it an integral part of relations between the two countries.

But on the Russian side it was a state staging from the start;

the more authoritarian Vladimir Putin's regime became, the more loyal the participants nominated by Russia were.

And on the German side, Gerhard Schröder's policy on Russia dominated for many years.

For many years, the German leadership of the event willingly played the Kremlin's game and defamed a realistic assessment of Russian politics as "anti-Russian".

The Petersburg Dialogue has played its part in the fact that the view of Russia in the German public has been shaped by Kremlin lobbyists for so long.