FILE - Vladimir Putin shakes hands with Dmitry Medvedev during his inauguration ceremony as new Russia's president in the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow, Russia, on May 7, 2018, with former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in centre. Gerhard Schroeder left the German chancellery after a narrow election defeat in 2005 with an ambitious overhaul of the country’s welfare state beginning to kick in and every chance of becoming a respected elder statesman. Fast-forward to last week: German lawmakers agreed to shut down Schroeder’s taxpayer-funded office, the European Parliament called for him to be sanctioned, and his own party set a mid-June hearing on applications to have him expelled. Schroeder’s association with the Russian energy sector turned the 78-year-old into a political pariah in Germany after the invasion of Ukraine. (Alexei Druzhinin, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)