The Putin apologists of the European parliament

Never underestimate Vladimir Putin, and certainly never underestimate his advisers. Well before the first Russian rockets exploded in metropolitan Kiev, he had achieved a major foreign policy success by sabotaging the EU’s ability to present a united front against him. Ever since the days of Gerhard Schroeder, Russia had deftly weaponised German politicians’ commitment to Ostpolitik and German people’s desire for a comfortable bourgeois life, and this undoubtedly paid off. Before the invasion the EU’s paymaster was less than enthusiastic about sanctions when reminded of the sunk costs of Nord Stream 2 and its short-sighted but temporarily lucrative decision to depend both on Russian gas and the profits it made by selling the machinery to extract it. Even after the invasion Germany took some persuading to support removing Russia from the Swift financial network.

Nor was the attack only economic; Putin successfully invoked the culture war too. Sympathy with Russia attracted the left who mistrusted the EU as a neoliberal conspiracy, the far right who saw it as an anti-national caucus, and leaders such as Viktor Orbán whose style of government Brussels overtly deprecated and sought to undermine.