IIRC they were saying publicly that they didn’t think Russia would invade, but in retrospect it’s clear they knew it was coming. I think they were just doing everything they could to deescalate the situation in the hope that Putin might be talked out of it.
Merkel played Putin for a fool with the Minsk treaty. Putin was dishonest in accepting the treaty, he always planned for a larger scale landgrab later on and started preparing for it. What he didn’t see coming was that the west, especially Merkel (these two really hated each others guts) saw right through his lies and NATO started preparing Ukraine for the coming invasion. Add to this the lies and corruption of the russian agents in Ukraine, who pocketed funds meant to prepare the landgrab by paying off locals, and you have the gigantic failure the planned “one week special military operation” has become.
Well the gas thing is complicated. Nearly every middle european country heavily relied on russian gas bc it was so damn cheap and gave them a competitive advantage. Europe was like a junkie on the needle “oh its not so bad nothing will happen”. But the invasion was a wake up call, and action was taken. There is still much to do, dont get me wrong, but we have come a long way. Russian invasion finally paved the way to collective european action and acquisitions on the gas market and that has helped to prevent blackouts (that Russia no doubt wanted) and tame the insane prices we had for a while a little. Thing is, there isnt many good reliable options for the amounts of gas europe needs. Norway stepped in big time (and they are the only really reliable and democratic country delivering large quantities). Middle east countries come with their own problems and unreliablities and american LNG is very expensive bc of transport (and building LNG terminals in the capacity now required takes time). In the long run, we just need to use less fossil fuels and more renewables, but that cant be done in a year or even 10 years.
I’m sorry but appeasing Russia by building another gas pipeline after they invaded Ukraine in 2014 was an awful thing to do, and it bit them on the arse, rightfully so.
One of your senior politicians involved ended up working for Gazprom.
Before the full-scale invasion, UK, US, and Polish intelligence were saying a war was imminent. Germany (and France tbf) were calling the US/UK/Poland warmongers. Aged quite poorly didn’t it?
And at the start of the war, Germany’s response was “we’ll send 5000 helmets, which will take months to arrive”. A piss-poor level of support. Thankfully they started stepping up as the war progressed and it became clear it was popular to do so.
Add to that Germany, despite being by far the richest country in Europe, isn’t even the biggest supporter of Ukraine in Europe.
Idk why you’re painting Merkel/Germany in such a positive light here. They appeased Russia for ages, Germany only took a tougher stance on Russia well after Merkel was gone.
Whether it was meant to keep their population from panicking is a valid discussion, but saying that Ukraine was not saying the invasion was unlikely is a total lie.
Ukraine had been preparing for this invasion since Crimea 2014, so they were definitely not saying that
IIRC they were saying publicly that they didn’t think Russia would invade, but in retrospect it’s clear they knew it was coming. I think they were just doing everything they could to deescalate the situation in the hope that Putin might be talked out of it.
Merkel played Putin for a fool with the Minsk treaty. Putin was dishonest in accepting the treaty, he always planned for a larger scale landgrab later on and started preparing for it. What he didn’t see coming was that the west, especially Merkel (these two really hated each others guts) saw right through his lies and NATO started preparing Ukraine for the coming invasion. Add to this the lies and corruption of the russian agents in Ukraine, who pocketed funds meant to prepare the landgrab by paying off locals, and you have the gigantic failure the planned “one week special military operation” has become.
Merkel was happily making Germany reliant on Russian gas.
Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and Merkel pushed for NS2 afterwards.
Merkel is absolutely not some NATO saviour.
Well the gas thing is complicated. Nearly every middle european country heavily relied on russian gas bc it was so damn cheap and gave them a competitive advantage. Europe was like a junkie on the needle “oh its not so bad nothing will happen”. But the invasion was a wake up call, and action was taken. There is still much to do, dont get me wrong, but we have come a long way. Russian invasion finally paved the way to collective european action and acquisitions on the gas market and that has helped to prevent blackouts (that Russia no doubt wanted) and tame the insane prices we had for a while a little. Thing is, there isnt many good reliable options for the amounts of gas europe needs. Norway stepped in big time (and they are the only really reliable and democratic country delivering large quantities). Middle east countries come with their own problems and unreliablities and american LNG is very expensive bc of transport (and building LNG terminals in the capacity now required takes time). In the long run, we just need to use less fossil fuels and more renewables, but that cant be done in a year or even 10 years.
I’m sorry but appeasing Russia by building another gas pipeline after they invaded Ukraine in 2014 was an awful thing to do, and it bit them on the arse, rightfully so.
One of your senior politicians involved ended up working for Gazprom.
Before the full-scale invasion, UK, US, and Polish intelligence were saying a war was imminent. Germany (and France tbf) were calling the US/UK/Poland warmongers. Aged quite poorly didn’t it?
And at the start of the war, Germany’s response was “we’ll send 5000 helmets, which will take months to arrive”. A piss-poor level of support. Thankfully they started stepping up as the war progressed and it became clear it was popular to do so.
Add to that Germany, despite being by far the richest country in Europe, isn’t even the biggest supporter of Ukraine in Europe.
Idk why you’re painting Merkel/Germany in such a positive light here. They appeased Russia for ages, Germany only took a tougher stance on Russia well after Merkel was gone.
What?
Whether it was meant to keep their population from panicking is a valid discussion, but saying that Ukraine was not saying the invasion was unlikely is a total lie.
Ah right. Partially misread OP’s comment, so that’s my bad