Germany’s center-left Social Democrats (SPD) are formally discussing the possible expulsion of disgraced former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder from the party on Thursday over his ties to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
KYIV. UkraineGate. 14. \u00a0July . 2022 | World News .\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Details<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Hanover branch of the SPD opened a hearing to discuss 17 complaints from local and regional branches against Schr\u00f6der’s permanent membership, and a decision is expected in at least three weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Schr\u00f6der has decided that his financial and personal dependence on Putin is more important than his loyalty to the SPD or the legacy of his chancellorship,” senior party official Thomas Kuchati told the Rheinische Post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, the decision of the arbitration commission is not expected on Thursday. Expulsion from the SPD party is considered unlikely for legal reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Legal experts say there are high hurdles to expel members from the party, and Schroeder will be able to appeal any decision against him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Note that Schroeder condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as “unjustified”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Context<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The former chancellor, who held the post from 1998 to 2005, has been criticized for years for his ties to Russian state-owned companies and is considered a close friend of Putin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pressure on Schroeder to distance himself from Putin increased after the invasion of Ukraine.\u00a0In May, Schroeder finally announced that he was\u00a0leaving\u00a0the supervisory board of Russian energy giant Rosneft.\u00a0He also refused to run for a position\u00a0on the supervisory board of Gazprom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In May, the German parliament\u00a0stripped Schroeder of some privileges\u00a0as an elder statesman, stripping him of his office and staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A few days ago, Schr\u00f6der\u00a0told\u00a0the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that he would not miss “an opportunity to speak with President Putin.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Source<\/strong>:\u00a0Ukrgate<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Germany’s center-left Social Democrats (SPD) are formally discussing the possible expulsion of disgraced former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder from the party on Thursday over his ties to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.\u00a0 KYIV. UkraineGate. 14. \u00a0July . 2022 | World News .\u00a0 Details The Hanover branch of the SPD opened a hearing to discuss 17 complaints from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":42420,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10474],"tags":[255,447,628,4807,813,2399,1000,1024,1854],"class_list":["post-42411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world-news","tag-coronavirus","tag-germany","tag-ministry-of-health","tag-party","tag-russia","tag-ukraine-gate","tag-ukraine-news","tag-ukrgate","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ukrgate.com\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ukrgate.com\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ukrgate.com\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ukrgate.com\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ukrgate.com\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42411"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ukrgate.com\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42421,"href":"https:\/\/www.ukrgate.com\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42411\/revisions\/42421"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ukrgate.com\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ukrgate.com\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ukrgate.com\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ukrgate.com\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}