The deep rift and open confrontation between Russia and the West since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has raised the question of what caused the derailing of the relationship that seemed to be heading towards partnership after the end of the Cold War. Currently, there is no unified view of the roots of the present conflict but two antagonistic narratives exist: one blaming the West, seeing NATO enlargement as a catastrophic mistake and the another looking at the continuation of Russian imperialism after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. One problem in these antagonistic narratives is that they tend to focus on the relationship between the United States and Russia and neglect the plurality of the so-called collective West. In the context even the biggest European states, such as Germany, have not been given sufficient attention. This paper will focus on German foreign policy towards Russia from 1992 to 1998. It starts from the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Yeltsin’s presidency of Russia and ends with Kohl departing from the chancellorship. The two antagonistic narratives will form a loose interpretative framework for the empirical questions but the main purpose is to construct an evidence based understanding of how German-Russian relations really evolved in this era. In addition to secondary literature and public sources consisting of documents and news, the paper will rely on primary sources derived from Helmut Kohl’s and German Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Auswärtiges Amt) archives. The paper will focus on four main sections: 1) German diplomacy, political support and economic assistance to Russia 2) NATO enlargement 3) Russia's war in Chechnya an d German perceptions of Russia's role in the former Soviet space 4) German assessments of Russia's future.
