Annalena Baerbock: Germany knew about Russian energy risks — and did nothing

Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Tuesday that German politicians knew about the dangers of increasing energy dependence on Russia after its 2014 Crimea annexation — and were now paying the price for ignoring the problem.

“Actually, we as Europeans have known since 2014 at the latest … that we must become completely independent of Russian fossil fuel imports, and a strategy was put in place to diversify our energy imports,” Baerbock said in a speech at the Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue.

“However, we did not tackle this, and this is now taking its revenge in the most brutal way,” she added.

German politicians — primarily the previous government of former Chancellor Angela Merkel — have come under closer scrutiny over the country’s problematic reliance on Russian energy imports, as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s years of aggressive geopolitical positioning culminated in a full-scale assault on Ukraine.

Germany now finds itself in a bind as it struggles to balance demands to ban energy imports from Moscow with the potential such a ban would have to plunge its own economy into recession.

Economy and Climate Minister Robert Habeck, who like Baerbock is from the Green party that was not part of the previous government, harshly criticized Berlin’s past decisions.

“Energy policy is always power policy, is always interest policy, is therefore always security policy. And if you look back, you almost can’t understand how we could be so blind to overlook that,” he told the conference in Berlin.

Despite Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and a Russian-influenced armed conflict in Eastern Ukraine in the following years, Germany increased its dependence on Russian energy imports and also approved the construction of the controversial Russia-to-Germany Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.

“We knew, or we could have known, that it was not only stupid to place all our security policy cards on just one country, but that it also wasn’t a smart idea to put them on that particular country,” Habeck said. “We have to acknowledge that we acted wrongly in the past.”

Green politicians have a track record of criticizing Germany’s strong dependence on Russian energy imports as well as the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, partly linked to their political stance of promoting renewables like wind or solar energy as an alternative solution to fossil fuels.

During last year’s German election campaign, in which Baerbock ran as chancellor candidate for the Green party, she was the only candidate who openly warned about Russia’s geopolitical intentions and the troublesome energy connections.

“If you really want to lead a country and a Europe, then you have to look ahead a bit and say: What will happen in the future? And Mr. Putin is in a competition, not only with Ukraine which he wants to destabilize, but also with us Europeans,” Baerbock said in one TV debate last summer.