Over a 20 year period, former German chancellors Gerhard Schroder and Angela Merkel, handed Russian President Vladimir Putin a vice-like grip on Europe’s energy security.
Schroder, who enjoyed a well-publicised bromance with Putin, oversaw the start of Gazprom’s Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline. With unseemly haste, soon after he stepped down as chancellor, Schroder became chairman of Nord Stream AG’s shareholder board.
Schroder’s successor Angela Merkel — the Russian speaking daughter of a Lutheran pastor who joined the East German communist youth party in her teens — was equally accommodating.
She oversaw the development of Russian gas projects in the face of opposition from her Nato allies and particular the United States, who tried to warn her off putting German industrial interests before those of European security. She could not have served Putin better.
The result is that Russia contributed 155bcm (billion cubic meters) in EU gas imports in 2021, some 45 per cent of the total.
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