Putin’s Gas Strategy Gives Germany Only Bad and Worse Choices
Chancellor Olaf Scholz must either pay for Russian gas on Vladimir Putin’s terms or face the painful economic fallout of a cutoff.
Berlin demonstrators last week didn’t mention the economic costs of an embargo of Russian oil and gas.
Photographer: Tamir Kalifa/Getty Images EuropeIn 2018, German government officials war-gamed a massive natural-gas shortage. With the real thing looming, the lessons are sobering. Some hospitals, nursing homes and jails were forced to close; companies shut; livestock was left to die; hundreds of thousands of jobs vanished; rationing for households was imposed, according to the official account of the crisis-management exercise.
In just a few weeks, Germany will face the same dilemma that Poland and Bulgaria encountered a few days ago: pay for Russian gas on Vladimir Putin’s terms, effectively breaching European sanctions, or see the Kremlin close the valves.