Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder faced further criticism at home after he was elected as chairman of Russia's biggest oil producer Rosneft on Friday, according to Reuters. Schroeder, a Social Democrat who led Germany from 1998 to 2005, prompted widespread criticism in his homeland in August when he was nominated to Rosneft's board, given Western sanctions against Moscow over the Ukraine crisis and Chancellor Angela Merkel's frosty relations with the Kremlin. Shareholders in state-controlled Rosneft, which is subject to the sanctions, elected Schroeder to its board at a meeting on Friday, and shortly afterwards Schroeder told a news briefing he was pleased to have been chosen to be chairman. Schroeder calls Russian President Vladimir Putin his friend and has criticised moves to impose sanctions on Russia. Germany's mass circulation Bild newspaper, which had dubbed Schroeder "Gazprom Gerhard", reported the news of his election with the headline: "Now he definitively belongs to Putin." Schroeder, 73, is already a divisive figure in the centre-left SPD given his labour market reforms. His nomination to the Rosneft board in August triggered criticism from across the political spectrum, with Merkel and the leader of the Social Democrats, Martin Schulz, both saying they would not take posts in industry after leaving office Schroeder hit back at that time, saying some of his critics wanted to push Germany into a "new Cold War".
