BERLIN
(Reuters) --- After nine months of non-stop German diplomacy to defuse the
crisis in Ukraine,
Chancellor Angela Merkel decided in mid-November that a change of tack was
needed.
Ahead of a summit
of G20 leaders in Australia,
Merkel resolved to confront Vladimir Putin alone, without the usual pack of
interpreters and aides.
Instead of
challenging him on what she saw as a string of broken promises, she would ask
the Russian president to spell out exactly what he wanted in Ukraine and
other former Soviet satellites the Kremlin had started bombarding with
propaganda.
On Nov. 15 at 10
p.m., a world away from the escalating violence in eastern Ukraine, the two met on the eighth
floor of the Brisbane Hilton. The meeting did not go as hoped.
For nearly four
hours, Merkel -- joined around midnight by new European Commission President
Jean-Claude Juncker -- tried to get the former KGB agent, a fluent German
speaker, to let down his guard and clearly state his intentions.
But all the
chancellor got from Putin, officials briefed on the conversation told Reuters,
were the same denials and dodges she had been hearing for months.
"He radiated
coldness," one official said of the encounter. "Putin has dug himself
in and he can't get out."
The meeting in Brisbane, and a separate one in Milan
one month before -- where Putin made promises about Russian behavior in eastern
Ukraine that German
officials say were broken within days -- pushed frustration levels in Berlin to new heights.
Merkel had hit a diplomatic dead-end with Putin.
Since February,
when the pro-Russian president of Ukraine,
Viktor Yanukovich, fled Kiev amid violent
protests on the Maidan square, Germany
has taken the lead in trying to convince Putin to engage with the West.
Merkel has spoken
to him by phone three dozen times. Her Foreign Minister Frank-Walter
Steinmeier, a member of the Social Democrats (SPD), traditionally a
Russia-friendly party, has invested hundreds of hours trying to secure a
negotiated solution to the conflict.
Now, German
officials say, they have run out of ideas about how they might sway the Russian
leader. The channels of communication with Putin will remain open, but Berlin is girding for a
long standoff, akin to a second Cold War.
"I think we
need to prepare ourselves for a prolonged conflict in which Russia will use all
the means at its disposal," Norbert Roettgen, chairman of the foreign
affairs committee in the German Bundestag and a member of Merkel's conservative
party, told Reuters.
"We are
essentially in a waiting game," said another German official, who
requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. "All we can
do is keep an eye on the violence in eastern Ukraine and be prepared to react to
it."
DAMAGE CONTROL
Merkel's
frustration was evident during a speech in Sydney, two days after her meeting with
Putin. In unusually stark language, she accused Russia of trampling on
international law with "old thinking" based on spheres of influence.
"After the
horror of the two world wars and the end of the Cold War, this calls into
question the peaceful order in Europe,"
she said.
A day after she
spoke, Steinmeier traveled to Moscow
to assess the damage.
He was ambushed by
Putin, who at the start of their talks launched into a diatribe about events on
the Maidan, accusing Europe of reneging on a deal to keep Yanukovich in power a
bit longer, according to the second German official. Steinmeier later
acknowledged that no progress had been made on the visit.
German officials
admit that for now, their strategy has been reduced to damage control on three
main fronts.
The first front is Kiev, where Berlin is working to ensure
emerging cracks between Ukraine's leaders -- President Petro Poroshenko and
Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk -- do not widen, as they did nearly a decade
ago between the previous leadership duo, Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia
Tymoshenko.
Yatseniuk, a
40-year-old technocrat, emerged strengthened from elections in October and his
hard-line stance on Russia
risks making the more diplomatic Poroshenko look weak, German officials worry.
A split between the
two would complicate Kiev's
ability to push through economic reforms and anti-corruption measures that are
key for securing new aid from the West. This would play right into Putin's
hands.
"Everything
needs to be done to keep them on track," said the first German official.
"We are working every day to prevent a repeat of Yushchenko and
Tymoshenko."
CHARM OFFENSIVE
The second battle
is against what German officials describe as a "massive propaganda
campaign" by the Kremlin to convince Russia
sympathizers in Germany and
elsewhere in Europe to break with the hard
line backed by Merkel and Washington.
The most public
example of this was an interview Putin gave to German public television station
ARD.
Broadcast on the
eve of Merkel's Sydney
speech, Putin struck an unusually conciliatory tone, saying he was convinced
there was a way out of the crisis. In a message tailored for his German
audience, he expressed concerns about ethnic cleansing in eastern Ukraine by
neo-Nazis wearing swastikas and SS symbols.
As part of this
campaign, Kremlin-funded broadcaster RT -- formerly known as Russia Today --
launched a German language station this month to put across Moscow's view of the crisis.
German media have
been complaining for months about their news sites being bombarded with
pro-Russian comments. German security sources say they are part of an organized
offensive steered from the Kremlin.
"Putin has
tools to influence opinion within the EU," said Ulrich Speck of the
Carnegie Europe thinktank. "He is doing his best to undermine the German
narrative of the Ukraine
crisis."
Already there are
signs of cracks. Matthias Platzeck, a former leader of the SPD, broke ranks
earlier this month and urged Germany
to recognize Russia's
annexation of Crimea.
This week, Russian
Economy Minister Alexei Ulyukaev is being hosted by Russia-friendly businessmen
in Stuttgart,
the heart of German industry.
Outside of Germany, Russia
is reaching out to former eastern bloc EU members like Hungary and Bulgaria, as well as Balkan states.
Last month in Milan, Merkel was made to wait for Putin for hours
because he lingered in the Serbian capital Belgrade to take part in a military parade.
Russia also appears to be extending a hand to
right-wing opposition parties in Europe. France's
National Front confirmed at the weekend that it had secured a 9 million euro
loan from a Moscow-based bank.
"HERCULEAN
TASK"
The Russian charm
offensive promises to make the third big challenge for German diplomacy --
keeping EU partners united on sanctions -- far more difficult.
The first set of EU
sanctions is due to expire in March and will need to be renewed. German
officials say Italy, Hungary and Slovakia will be the most difficult
countries to keep on board.
"Putin will be
trying to peel countries away in the run-up to March," said one. Another
described the battle to keep the EU united on Russia as a "Herculean
task".
Against the
backdrop of this fragile EU consensus, ratcheting up economic sanctions further
is seen as a "no go" in Berlin
for now.
That would change,
German officials say, if Russian-backed separatists carved out a corridor of
control from eastern Ukraine
to Crimea by taking the strategic city of Mariupol.
For Merkel however,
the showdown seems to be evolving from a fast-moving tit-for-tat affair into a
longer game in which the West slowly squeezes Russia's struggling economy in the
hope that Putin eventually blinks.
"Because we
have ruled out war, some people may think they can do whatever they like with
us," she said late last month at an event in the east German church where
she was baptized, opening up to an audience of locals who, like her, had been
taught to love mother Russia in their youth.
"We won't
allow this," she added.