DW Irini Anastassopoulou
How long can Germany withstand the stifling pressure of some of its partners to impose an embargo on Russian gas, especially after what happened in the city of Bukhara?
The newspaper Handelsblatt points out that the massacre in the city evokes images from Srebrenica in 1995 during the war in the former Yugoslavia. International pressure on the chancellor is steadily mounting to stop funding Putin’s war.
Germany between Scylla and Charybdis
“For the West, and especially for Germany, the margins are narrowing,” she said.
The more war horrors come to light, the tougher the Kremlin’s response should be. The West is now called upon to prove that its much-discussed unity is not ready to disintegrate.
And first NATO should give more weapons to Ukraine, Germany should stop being a brake.
At the same time, Berlin is called upon to carry out a difficult acrobatics and to supply other weapons to Ukraine without being directly involved in the war. In this sense, the German government is located between Scylla and Charybdis.
If it delays the decision to impose an embargo on Russian energy, it will be left alone in Europe and will have to accept the accusation that it is financing Putin’s war. The political mistakes of the past are getting their revenge. And this lesson is bitter for Germany.
Such a political mistake was admitted yesterday while speaking to journalists by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, causing a great sensation. For those who do not know o Steinmeier served as chancellor under Gerhard Schroeder and for many years as foreign minister in Merkel governments that backed the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, claiming it was an economic rather than a political project. In the wake of the Russian invasion and in the light of this past, Berlin openly receives accusations of its political role in this war.
The newspaper columnist Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung which is circulating in Heidelberg, tries to put things in order.
The representatives of Ukraine make serious accusations against Germany, that is, that the policy of cooperation with Russia made possible a tough war. “Apart from the fact that the much harsher actions of the most powerful US could not prevent Putin’s attack on Ukraine, the tone they adopt, especially Zelensky and the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, is intolerable,” notes the German columnist. bearing in mind that they refer to a country whose inhabitants are being decimated, Buka’s dead are not Merkel’s dead, Chancellor Soltz’s refusal to support a no-fly zone over Ukraine is reasonable and Steinmeier admits that for years he was wrong “Putin’s clear confession of his own mistakes.”
“Rumors have been circulating for a few days now, but the German government’s decision to put in proceedings”fast track“Under temporary management, the Russian subsidiary Gazprom Germania is unique in the post-war history of Germany. It is managed until the end of September by the Federal Network Service based in Bonn.
It was an emergency operation, as noted by Wirtschaftswochebecause the finance minister did not want to abandon Germany’s energy security in the Kremlin’s arbitrary decisions.
The newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung sheds light on the background of this hasty move.
In particular, as its columnist writes, just last Friday, the Russian gas giant Gazprom announced that it wants to leave its German subsidiary, Gazprom Germania GmbH, based in Berlin.
It includes, among others, Wingas gas supplier Astora storage company, which in turn operates Germany’s largest gas storage facility, as well as trading houses in Switzerland and Britain. They, in turn, entered into contracts with Gazprom long before the start of the war that allowed imports of Russian gas at relatively low prices.
But all this construction, as it turns out afterwards, was on the verge of collapse, perhaps of targeted collapse, “the German columnist claims.
But what alarmed the German government even more was that a week before Gazprom announced via Telegram the separation from its subsidiary, the Russian giant had already transferred the shares of the subsidiary elsewhere.
They were transferred from Gazprom Export LLC, a 100% subsidiary of the group, to another company called Gazprom Export Business Service LLC, which is also based in Russia, “reads the detailed article.” shares of the latter were transferred to another company called Palmary. And not only that. 100% of the voting rights went to Palmary, and with it the control over Gazprom Germania.
Who is now legally and financially behind Palmary remains unclear. As if that were not enough, Gazprom Export Business Service passed a shareholder decision for ‘voluntary liquidation’ of Gazprom Germany. In short, Moscow wanted to turn the company’s fortunes into a gray area of legitimacy and make the future of Wingas and Astora, which manages Germany’s largest gas storage facility, uncertain. After all this better his emergency brake (Minister of Economy).
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