PRESIDENT PUTIN has smoothed the way for his old friend Gerhard Schröder to adopt another orphan and achieve his lifelong ambition of having a son.

The ten-month-old boy is the second Russian orphan to be adopted by the former German leader in a move that will go some way to restoring his tarnished public image.

Herr Schröder is 62 and although his wife, Doris, is only 43, he would not normally have been considered by adoption agencies. But the boy was living in an orphanage in St Petersburg, the Russian President’s home turf.

The Kremlin leader first accelerated adoption procedures, and bent rules, to ensure that the Schröders could adopt a three-year-old girl from a St Petersburg home in 2004.

He appears to have pulled the strings again for the man he calls “Dear Gerd” to adopt what commentators may be tempted to call a “Gazprom baby” after the Russian state-owned energy giant that has helped to make the former Chancellor a rich man. Herr Schröder can often be seen walking with the girl, Viktoria, in the park near his end-of-terrace house in Hannover. That adoption was regarded with suspicion by the German media because of Mr Putin’s involvement and the looming elections.

But Viktoria — her face is always hidden in newspapers because of privacy laws — has become a familiar part of the former Chancellor’s family and no one doubts Herr Schröder’s motives any more. The household includes Frau Schröder’s daughter by a former relationship, a cat — to which the former Chancellor is allergic — and a border terrier. The family could soon be looking for a larger home and, thanks to the helping hand of President Putin, could certainly afford to. One of the former Chancellor’s first jobs after losing the election almost a year ago was to become supervisory chairman of a Gazprom consortium building a pipeline through the Baltic Sea.

He shrugged off charges of profiting from his position and now draws a salary estimated at €250,000 (£170,000) a year. This comes on top of his consultancy with the Ringier publishing empire (where his brief is to open doors with the Russian and Chinese elite), his public speaking (more than €50,000 a speech), a directorship with the N M Rothschild bank (€50,000 a year) and his memoirs. The book is due to appear in October and is said to have captured an advance of about €600,000.

His Chancellor’s pension is €10,000 a month, enhanced by pensions from his stint as prime minister of Lower Saxony and as a member of parliament.

However, it is the Gazprom salary that has, as one German commentator put it, “provided the cream on his coffee”. Herr Schröder came from a poor background and has made no secret of his desire to build up a fortune for his expanding family. President Putin, rather than any of his other international contacts, has made this possible — a strange special relationship.

Mr Putin and Herr Schröder have flown regularly to each other’s birthday parties. On the occasion of Herr Schröder’s 60th birthday the Russian leader brought a Cossack choir with him to sing Happy Birthday to You. German suspicion about this intimacy seems to have been swept away by the latest adoption. Not even Herr Schröder’s most vitriolic critics could claim that the latest adoption served some political purpose. The mass circulation newspaper Bild-Zeitung said: “As a chancellor you shouldered responsibility from one election to another. As a father, you shoulder responsibility for the whole of your life.”

There is no chance of a political comeback for Herr Schrö- der but he seems to be doing something right again: 52 per cent of Germans say that he would be a stronger leader than Angela Merkel, the present Chancellor.

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