So was Putin just bluffing when he announced that in future gas would only be available for rubles?

This week he doesn't turn off the tap.

But who still wants to rely on statements from the Kremlin?

The federal government no longer.

The Economics Minister therefore called the early warning level of the gas emergency plan.

What for decades had been considered impossible by almost all decision-makers in politics and business who dealt with Russia is now regarded as a danger that could befall the country at any time.

Bertolt Kohler

Editor.

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The full extent of the consequences of a delivery stop has been a matter of debate in politics and business since the demand arose in the West, for moral and real-political reasons, to forego energy supplies from Russia.

No one doubts, however, that the German economy would suffer severely from the sudden deprivation of the Siberian lifeblood on which Germany has made itself so dependent.

The prospect of a full-blown recession is why the Scholz government has so far refused to impose an immediate energy embargo.

The traffic light coalition fears not only a wave of bankruptcies, the disruption of supply chains, unemployment and even higher inflation than before.

Those in power, not just those in Berlin, are also concerned about the shock waves such a slump could send through German society.

Should this really be as little crisis-proof as some politicians think?

Then German politicians would have to put up with the cross-party accusation of having encouraged softening for decades.

Care at the expense of future generations

The crises could be about whatever they wanted – bankrupt states, fraudulent banks, the climate, a virus – but they did not result in any lasting loss of prosperity for the Germans.

Father State and Mother Merkel were always ready with help at astronomical heights to avert the worst.

Of course, there would be nothing wrong with such caring – if the support hadn’t always come on credit and thus at the expense of future generations.

The German state has turned into a fully comprehensive insurance, which postpones the premium payment to the future.

Only a few people care that the small print in the insurance conditions has to be changed again and again.

Perhaps some even believe that the "special fund" decided by the coalition to upgrade the Bundeswehr is actually a fortune.

In any case, the majority will expect, out of habit, that if things get bad again, the chancellor will appear in front of the cameras and say: Don't worry, I'm here.

Just like Merkel used to, the crisis chancellor.

Two ghosts from the German past

A super crisis from a pandemic that has not yet ended and a war-related recession could overwhelm even the German welfare state.

Not every level of unemployment can be cushioned by short-time work.

The second specter from the past, inflation, has already attached itself to the savings of the Germans.

War, unemployment, devaluation - in view of this historically burdened combination, it is no wonder that politicians are feeling uneasy.

But why did Putin himself threaten to take a step that Berlin shies away from?

To show that he is ready for escalation on every front and that he could wage a war of aggression and annihilation in Ukraine without the money from the West?

The lack of transfers would hit the Russian state hard, but would probably not immediately force the Kremlin to end the campaign in Ukraine.

Putin's cost-benefit analysis, it should be clear by now, is different from what is taught and learned in Western universities.

Who is to blame for dependence on a despot?

Putin certainly considers the Russian people to be more capable of suffering than what he sees as the decadent West, where politicians have to take public opinion into account.

In Germany, too, the mood could change if an economic crisis erupted due to the immediate cessation of Russian energy supplies, but the war in Ukraine continued.

The discussion about who is to blame for Germany becoming dependent on a despot has already begun.

The onset of coming to terms with the past may also have contributed to increasing calls for the gas tap to be turned off before Putin does it.

German politics still likes to swing from one extreme to the other, especially when the need is great.