Who do you think you are kidding, Mrs Merkel?

From the BBC:

Mr Zelensky [Ukraine's president] opposes the pipeline, which he says threatens Ukraine’s security. It will run under the Baltic Sea and double Russian gas exports to Germany…

Mrs Merkel has tried to assure Central and Eastern European states that the pipeline would not make Germany reliant on Russia for energy.

Where do you start? A few facts which must be patently obvious to everybody else:

1. Russia IS using its oil and gas as economic ‘weapons’, always has done, always will. Same as the Saudis.

2. Russia has every incentive to build its own pipeline under the Baltic. They won’t have to pay Ukraine ‘billons of dollars’ and Ukraine won’t be able to (threaten to} just turn off the taps.

3. Putin is quite happy for Ukraine to go bankrupt, that’s a bonus as far as he’s concerned.

4. The money which Germany is offering to pay Ukraine to help it ‘expand its renewable energy sector’ will have zero effect on anything.

5. Germany IS completely reliant on Russian gas for energy. They shut down their coal fired plants (having been bamboozled by the wrong explanation for the Greenhouse Effect) and started phasing out their nuclear plants after the Fukushima disaster (even though Germany isn’t an earthquake zone).

6. IIRC, Germany has been reliant on Russian gas for decades. The Russians even gave former the previous Chancellor a (no doubt very well-paid) psuedo-job with Nord Stream, the organisation running the new pipeline.

7. Germany is not going to impose proper harsh sanctions on Russia, as Putin could simply cut off the gas supplies. He can hold out longer than Germany can. The impact of sanctions is slow, drip-drip. The impact of having your electricity sector shut down is immediate.