Germany’s leadership a global ‘laughing stock’ – Putin

Germany is being bossed around by its Western partners because it lacks sovereignty, and its policymakers demonstrate poor leadership skills, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a Wednesday meeting with young Russian scientists.

Putin weighed on the EU’s push to wean itself off Russian energy following the start of the Ukraine conflict, arguing that by implementing the measure, Germany was only hurting itself.

The president noted that either European countries are turning their backs on cheap energy on their own accord, or the decision-making is being “done by their allies from the United States due to political reasons.” 

In this sense, the EU’s energy security took a hit when Poland and Ukraine cut off Russian gas supplies through their territory and the Nord Stream pipelines were blown up, he added.

According to Putin, who had maintained close working relations with Berlin for most part of his political career, Kiev “receives money from Europe, from Germany… while the gas they need from Russia has been cut off.”

Shortly after the start of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, the EU unveiled a plan to wean itself off Russian energy “well before 2030.” In April 2022, Russian energy giant Gazprom announced that it would stop delivering gas via the Yamal-Europe pipeline, which runs through Poland, because the country had refused to pay for the energy using rubles due to sanctions against Moscow.

At the same time, Western restrictions launched as a response to the Ukraine conflict – including those on fossil fuel imports – were among the main culprits which led to last year’s energy crisis.

READ MORE: Russia could sue over Nord Stream attack

The situation was exacerbated by the September 2022 bombing of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines, which connect Russia and Germany under the Baltic Sea. While several Western media outlets have suggested that the energy pipelines were blown up by Ukrainian-linked saboteurs, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh alleges that the attack was orchestrated by US intelligence agencies.

Putin has agreed with Hersh’s conclusions, arguing that a sabotage of this magnitude would have been impossible to pull off without state support.

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