Germany’s painful moral and economic debate over its reliance on Russian gas

September 25, 2001. Elected to the Kremlin a year and a half earlier, Vladimir Putin addressed the Bundestag in Berlin in the “language of Goethe, Schiller and Kant”. By noting the need for Russia to develop democratic rights, he had seduced the German parliamentarians. Today, Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is causing a lively moral and economic debate across the Rhine. Due to its dependence on Russian hydrocarbons, Germany feeds Putin’s coffers to the tune of 200 million euros per day. It is, on the one hand, excessively accused, in particular by kyiv, of financing the Russian war effort and, on the other, the leaders of the big German companies warn of a collapse of the economy. The European Union pushes Berlin to adopt a total embargo.