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Politico (7 March 2022)

BY HANS VON DER BURCHARD AND MERLIN SUGUE

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Monday pushed back hard against calls from the U.S. and Ukraine for a ban on imports of Russian gas and oil as part of international sanctions on Moscow.

One of the darkest ironies of Russian President Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine is that Europe is helping fund the Kremlin's war machine through energy payments. Despite repeated pledges to reduce dependence on Russia after the invasion of Crimea in 2014, the EU has failed to combat its hydrocarbon addiction. Dismissing fears that Putin was a serious threat, Germany was long the main proponent of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline pumping gas from Russian export monopoly Gazprom straight to Germany.

Although Berlin finally had to freeze the Nord Stream 2 project after the invasion of Ukraine, Scholz made clear that Europe's biggest economy would not make any further energy sacrifices and would keep buying from Russia.

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