I don’t understand why Germany wasn’t livid when their leader literally went to work for Russian oil interests [1]. That seems like blatant corruption, doesn’t it?
What I would do, if I wanted to increase Germany’s reliance on Russia, is use money to ensure the voices of real German people who oppose nuclear power were amplified.
All Russia had to do is use their unlimited money (from selling gas to Germany) to buy some influence in German news papers (difficulty level: easy) and maybe pay some people to organize protests.
Of course the fact that Russians bought Schroder isn't even speculation (unlike the above). To me the above is extremely likely to have happened (and probably still on-going).
Even in the early days of Putin's war Germany was still sponsoring Putin by buying many 100's of millions of EUR of gas from him.
They "got rid of Russian dependence in the energy sector" by reopening old German coal mines, firing up coal power plants and shifting gas imports from Russia to the US + importing tons of nuclear energy from France.
Germany only stopped buying Russian gas for > 50% of their energy needs AFTER a war started AFTER the pipelines to Russia got bombed and AFTER they had no other choice.
Yes, the plan was set in motion many years earlier. But the reliance Russian energy (whether fossil or uranium fuel) would have been there in either case. Energy exports are a big lever for Russia in foreign affairs.
But the Russians didn’t use the energy leverage so far, did they? Germany seemingly decided to do the damage to themselves on their own. Wouldn’t it be better to take time and find alternative sources of energy first? This is what I don’t understand.
I think the idea is that Russia fosters interdependence on their natural resources as a way to limit retaliation for territorial expansion. It worked with Georgia and Crimea, but they may have miscalculated with Ukraine.
