[baybal2]

Not Germany, but its politicians.

They themselves sabotaged North Sea gas projects, and drilling for gas elsewhere in Europe, as well as Qatari gas offers.

Remaining beholden to Russian natural gas takes a lot of effort on their side.

[bingohbangoh]

They can still opt to buy American gas shipped over the sea. The pipeline was built so they don't have to buy a multiple of what Russian gas would cost.

If Germany was really afraid of Russia, they wouldn't be gutting their military or would've made bigger rumblings when the US began downsizing its presence in the mid 2000s.

This is all a ploy on Russophobia -- particularly since every right winger is thought to be directionally Putin-like and this year is an election year with the AfD appearing to be ascendant.

[sebwi]

Except, the AfD is not ascendant. Polls show their support has been rather stagnant at about 10-11% for quite some time now. In the last election, they got 12.6% so they have actually lost some support since then.

There is also hardly anyone doubting that Russia would conduct such an operation. It's their modus operandi. Sympathy towards Russia also does not really rely upon sympathy towards the current government but on historical links.

Source: https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/index.htm

[bingohbangoh]

Hence "appearing to be" and if this is working, then perhaps that's why their popularity has stagnated for so long.

Or people don't really like them.

Not taking sides, offering perspective I rarely see mentioned.

[philjohn]

Isn't that part of the reason why they blocked cutting Russia off from SWIFT?

[baybal2]

It is, as for many more things.

And they are drawing "a picture of the crisis," where there is none.

Germans kept blocking gas from Netherlands, yet doing everything to keep buying it from Lootin.

They actually even sued Poland recently for them booting Russians from their pipeline: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/eu-court-rejects-ger...