Sanctions will be toothless against Putin's Russia, as history's tectonic plates shift again
Since it is hard to know where to start on this one, we might as well begin with Germany, whose supposed cancellation of Nord Stream 2 is probably the most potent weapon the West can muster against Putin’s tsarist pretensions.
But abandonment of Nord Stream 2 will certainly give the Russian president some pause for thought as he weighs a further escalation in hostilities.
It nevertheless beggars belief that Germany should have rendered itself so hopelessly impotent against Putin’s ambitions by dint of its reliance on Russian gas.
Germany’s former chancellor, Angela Merkel, an East German by origin with an apparent soft spot for the Russian bear, should take much of the blame. The decision to close down Germany’s remaining nuclear power capacity, rather than beef it up, could scarcely have been more shortsighted or dangerous.
The European Union’s hubristic expansion eastwards – enthusiastically backed by successive UK governments, by the way – meanwhile incubated a deep-seated sense of Russian grievance that came spilling out in Putin’s rambling, half-mad televised address to the nation yesterday as his tanks rolled in
Jeremy Warner, assistant editor of The Daily Telegraph, 23 February 2022
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