Former German leader Gerhard Schröder receiving treatment for burnout

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BERLIN (AP) — Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who has faced heavy criticism in recent years for his ties with Russia, is receiving treatment in a hospital for burnout, German news agency dpa reported Tuesday.

The 80-year-old Schröder led Germany from 1998 to 2005. He was the leader of current Chancellor Olaf Scholz's center-left Social Democratic Party from 1999 to 2004.

But his involvement with Russian state-owned energy companies and his reluctance after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine to distance himself wholeheartedly from Russian President Vladimir Putin, with whom he has long had a friendly relationship, estranged him from the German political establishment.

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On Tuesday, dpa cited a doctor's assessment that Schröder is “suffering from severe burnout syndrome with the typical signs of profound exhaustion and a pronounced lack of energy.” It reported that Schröder's lawyer, Hans-Peter Huber, said he had gone into clinical treatment on the advice of the doctor.

Schröder was supposed to be questioned last month by a parliamentary commission of inquiry in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania into the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, whose board of directors he headed. But he didn't appear because of illness.

Nord Stream 2 never went into service and was damaged in underwater explosions in the Baltic Sea in September 2022.