With Schulz's truly strange behavior in stalling support for Ukraine, and involvement in the Wirecard and cum-ex scandals, I truly wonder if there might be some kompromat hanging over Scholz's head around this.
Also compared to the US, Germany has given about 60 billion total aid (including the EU share + refugee cost) if I calculate it correctly, while the US has given 75 billion. So it gives much more per GDP.
There have been claims that in Putin's Dresden days, he happened to be assigned as the personal shadow of Scholz when young Olaf visited eastern Germany as a representative of the SPD youth organization. That would imply that Putin had been personally working on a file on him more than thirty years before Scholz became chancellor. This would certainly add some weight to any speculations about Putin having some form of leverage over Scholz. Being compromised does not eventually wear off over time, it compounds with every successful use.
I don't know if that assignment has been confirmed by any other source, but we do know that the visits have happened. They are even documented in radio archives. According to present day public broadcasting journalists, those actually happen to be the oldest known public recordings of Scholz.
