One Year After: How Putin Got Germany Wrong
Putin has repeatedly emphasized the historical links between Germany and Russia, alluding to guilt over crimes committed in the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and German appreciation for Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s consent for a peaceful German reunification. On multiple occasions, he has described the annexation of Crimea as a reunification, attempting to draw a parallel with Germany’s 1990 reunification.
The German Shock
To Putin’s surprise, Germany has drastically shifted its policies toward Russia, including successfully detangling itself from Russian energy. Russia rushed to finalize the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in the months before the invasion and deliberately emptied German gas storages owned by Russian state energy company Gazprom to increase pressure on Germany. However, a few days before the invasion, Germany irretrievably ended the Nord Stream 2 project and, after Russia halted all gas supplies, reverted from primarily Russian pipeline gas to mainly liquid natural gas to fill its storages.
Germany also advanced and supported major sanctions on Russia. Between November 2021 and November 2022, German exports to Russia fell by 1.29 billion euros (a 51.3 percent decrease) and imports from Russia fell by 2.36 billion euros (a 59.4 percent decrease). The once militarily restrained country committed to spending at least 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on defense, as is the stated aim for members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and has provided significant military support to NATO’s eastern flank member states and Ukraine. Today, Germany is the second-biggest contributor of military aid to Ukraine in Europe, after the United Kingdom. Despite Putin’s complaints that eighty years after WWII, “[Russians] are again being threatened by German Leopard tanks,” Germany and its partners plan to deliver the first battalion of Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine by April and older Leopard I tanks will follow.
Russia’s misjudgment of Germany, and Germany’s turnaround, has played a significant role in a war many assumed would end in a swift Ukrainian defeat. Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Zeitenwende commitments have drawn criticism for hesitation, slow implementation, and deference to U.S. leadership. Nevertheless, Germany has squarely refuted Putin’s expectations. In fact, Russia’s war has triggered the greatest transformation in German foreign and security policy since the end of the Cold War.
Liana Fix is a Fellow for Europe at CFR. Caroline Kapp is a Research Associate, U.S. Foreign Policy, at CFR. This article is published courtesy of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
