Category Archives: Germany

‘Firms will go bust’: Germany prepares for a future without Russian gas

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Germany is bracing for supplies to be cut by Moscow in retaliation for sanctions or as part of an energy embargo

In Germany, they call it “Day X”. Businesses up and down the land are making contingency plans for what is seen as a growing likelihood that Russian gas will stop flowing into Europe’s biggest economy.

“It would be a disaster – one which would have seemed almost unthinkable just two months ago, but which right now feels like a very realistic prospect,” the owner of a hi-tech mechanical engineering company in western Germany said. The firm produces everything from battery cases for electric cars to train clutch systems.

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Germany will stop importing Russian gas ‘very soon’, says Olaf Scholz

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Chancellor declines to endorse claim by Boris Johnson during London visit that goal will be achieved by mid-2024

The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has said his country is doing all it can to wean itself off Russian energy, but declined to endorse a claim by Boris Johnson that it would stop importing Russian gas by the middle of 2024.

Scholz said only that the goal would be achieved very soon, and that Germany would stop using Russian coal by the summer and Russian oil by the end of the year.

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Germany’s Watergate: 1950s chancellor used spy agency to infiltrate rival party

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Covert flow of information from BND enabled Konrad Adenauer to cement his hold on power, historians reveal

Germany’s first democratically elected chancellor used the country’s foreign intelligence service to systematically spy on his biggest political rivals for almost a decade, a group of independent historians tasked with researching the formerly West German spy agency’s history have discovered.

The covert and illegal flow of information between the offices of Konrad Adenauer and the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) chief, Reinhard Gehlen, enabled the conservative politician to cement his hold on power through accurate insider knowledge on the campaign strategies, parliamentary manoeuvres and internal power struggles of the Social Democratic party (SPD), which led the opposition in the Bundestag at the time.

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Woman who drew up Schindler’s lists during Holocaust dies at 107

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Mimi Reinhardt was in charge of compiling names of Jews to work in German industrialist’s factory

The woman who drew up lists of people for the German industrialist Oskar Schindler that helped save hundreds of Jews during the Holocaust has died aged 107.

Mimi Reinhardt, who was employed as Schindler’s secretary, was in charge of drawing up the lists of Jewish workers from the ghetto of the Polish city of Kraków who were recruited to work at his factory, saving them from deportation to Nazi death camps.

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Putin’s daughters targeted in US sanctions against Russia

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Joe Biden links new measures directly to accounts of atrocities committed by Russian forces in Bucha

The US has announced a new round of sanctions targeting Russia’s top public and private banks and two daughters of Vladimir Putin, following mounting global accusations of Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

The sanctions targeted Maria Vorontsova and Katerina Tikhonova, two adult daughters of Putin’s with his former wife Lyudmila Shkrebneva.

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The bodies of Bucha have set a difficult test for the west

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Analysis: From Ukraine’s point of view, this has to be the time to pile pressure on Germany in particular

Sometimes a war crime is so egregious, and so fully reported, that it cannot but stir the conscience of the west. The My Lai massacre in 1968, Srebrenica in 1995, the British suppression of the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya, the Rwanda genocide of 1994, the Disappeared of Argentina under the junta in the 1980s or even the dispatches about bodies piled high in Bulgarian town squares by the US war reporter Januarius MacGahan in 1876 were all moments when the defence of ignorance has to be abandoned.

Even then the truth is more complicated and the west did not always act. Bill Clinton regretted he did not respond to the murders of Tutsis in 1994, saying he did not “fully appreciate the depth and the speed with which [Rwandans] were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror”. Srebrenica was arguably only the culmination of ethnic cleansing that had been going on for three years. My Lai, revealed two years after the event, only provided further momentum to a pre-existing US anti-war movement. The scale of the British repression of the Mau Mau rebellion was only truly documented decades afterwards by a Harvard historian Caroline Elkins in her book Britain’s Gulag.

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Killing of civilians in Bucha and Kyiv condemned as ‘terrible war crime’

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Europe pledges further sanctions against Russia after reports of killing of scores of unarmed Ukrainians

Russia stands accused of “terrible” war crimes, as western leaders condemned the killings of unarmed civilians in Bucha and the surrounding areas of Kyiv in alleged atrocities that prompted fresh demands for tougher action against Moscow.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the Kremlin-ordered attack on his country amounted to genocide, after local officials reported scores of civilians had been killed in the towns of Bucha, Irpin and Hostomel near the capital following the withdrawal of Russian forces.

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UN donor conference falls billions short of $4.4bn target to help Afghanistan

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Conference raises only $2.44bn as Russian foreign minister says west is responsible for country’s humanitarian crisis

The world’s donor drought, and growing global divisions over Afghanistan’s political direction, have been laid bare when a UN appeal for $4.4bn (£3.35bn) to help Afghanistan fell massively short, the second UN donor conference in a month to do so.

Donor countries pledged only $2.44bn towards the appeal, a senior UN official said on Thursday after a high-level pledging conference.

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Olaf Scholz’s SPD secures major win in Saarland state election

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Rare absolute majority suggests there may be more to centre-left’s revival than good fortune

The German chancellor Olaf Scholz’s centre-left party has passed its first electoral test since entering government, after the Social Democratic party secured a rare absolute majority at Saarland state elections.

Led by Anke Rehlinger, a trained lawyer and former shot putter, the SPD won 43.5% of Sunday’s vote in the small state on the French border.

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Berlin Krautrock exhibition celebrates groundbreaking genre

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Posters of Kraftwerk, Neu! and Can span movement’s roots in the counterculture scene of 1968

A motley train of shaggy-haired musicians is gliding into the future on a hastily sketched highway, brandishing bongos, vegetables and flaming guitars.

The poster for a 1971 gig by German-English-Swiss trio Brainticket, on display at Berlin’s small Bröhan Museum until 24 April, visually sums up the essence of a German musical movement so forward-looking at its height, its country of origin is only now starting to recognise its legacy.

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Germany agrees gas deal with Qatar to help end dependency on Russia

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Long-term contract will not immediately stop flow of money to Russia, for which German ministers have been criticised

Germany has agreed a contract with Qatar for the supply of liquefied natural gas (LNG) that will help the European country wean itself off its dependency on Russian energy.

But the contract is a long-term solution and will do little to slow the current flow of European money into Russian coffers, estimated to be worth $285m (£217m) a day for oil alone.

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Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 23 of the invasion

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Food supply fears as Biden plans to warn Chinese president against providing military support for Russia

Russia’s bombardment in the east of Ukraine continued on Friday. In the streets of Mariupol, where 350,000 civilians have been stranded with little food or water, Russia’s armed forces were “tightening the noose” around the city, a spokesperson for the Russian defence ministry said. In the eastern city of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s state emergency service said a multistorey teaching building had been shelled on Friday morning, killing one person, wounding 11 and trapping one other in the rubble.

Russian missiles struck an aircraft repair plant in Ukraine’s western city of Lviv, 50 miles from the border with Poland and a safe haven for hundreds of thousands of internally displaced Ukrainians. Blasts were heard at about 6am on Friday, preceded by the sound of air raid sirens, and a mushroom-shaped plume of smoke could be seen rising in the sky.

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‘We must welcome them’: how Europe is helping Ukrainian refugees

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Unlike the UK, EU countries have offered open sanctuary to the millions fleeing Russia’s attack in biggest refugee crisis since second world war

Over the past few days, images of desperate Ukrainian families being turned away by officials have thrown the UK’s response to what has been termed the biggest refugee crisis since the second world war into stark contrast with its European neighbours.

So far the UK has refused to match the EU’s decision to offer Ukrainians open sanctuary, instead operating a limited family reunification and humanitarian sponsorship system.

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Iran nuclear talks rocked by Russian demand for sanctions exemption

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Moscow seeks guarantees regarding trade with Iran that would undermine west’s response to Ukraine invasion

Russia has been accused of trying to take the Iran nuclear deal hostage as part of its wider battle with the west over Ukraine, after it threw a last-minute spanner into plans for an agreement to lift a swathe of US economic sanctions on Tehran.

After months of negotiations in Vienna, a revised deal was expected to be reached within days under which US sanctions would be lifted in return for Tehran returning to full compliance with the 2015 nuclear nonproliferation deal.

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Putin’s war is a watershed moment for the EU – the days of ‘never again’ are back | Caroline de Gruyter

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Suddenly, brutally, the invasion of Ukraine has taken member states back to the founding principle of the European project

Interpreters in the European parliament usually sound so monotonous and mechanical that even well-rested listeners have trouble staying awake. But when the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, addressed a parliamentary session via video link on Tuesday, something extraordinary happened: the person relaying his words into English was so moved that he audibly fought to hold back his tears. “We’re fighting … just for our land … and for our freedom,” he said, then sniffed, his voice almost breaking as Zelenskiy, wearing a khaki T-shirt in what looked like a bunker, declared: “Despite the fact … that all our cities of our country are now blocked … nobody is going to enter and intervene with the freedom and our country.”

This is just one example among many, of how Vladimir Putin’s brutal war on Ukraine is shaking Europeans to the core. Having long believed that war was impossible on the continent, they are shocked – and embarrassed – that Ukrainians must not only defend their country against Russian aggression, but must also defend democracy, freedom and the right of sovereign states to determine their destiny – the very principles that underpin the European Union.

Caroline de Gruyter is a Europe correspondent and columnist for the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad, and Foreign Policy

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Germany seizes Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov’s $600m superyacht – report

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Hamburg authorities seized the 156-metre Dilbar as yachts belonging to five other Russian billionaires headed to the non-extradition Maldives

Russia-Ukraine crisis: live news

German authorities have reportedly seized the $600m superyacht belonging to Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov in a Hamburg shipyard.

Usmanov was on a list of billionaires to face sanctions from the European Union in response to Russia’s 24 February invasion of Ukraine. It came as the French finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, said it had seized a yacht linked to Rosneft boss Igor Sechin in the Mediterranean port of La Ciotat.

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If you want to hit Russian economy hard, aim for energy export

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Sanctions debate rapidly heading towards energy sanctions in Ukraine-Russia crisis

At the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a week ago, almost every analyst agreed that Russian oil and gas would keep flowing westwards. The state of mutual energy dependence seemed too entrenched. On one side, the EU could not decouple itself easily from the source of 38% of its natural gas imports. On the other, Russia under financial sanctions would need cash. Old hands reflected that, even in the long decades of the cold war, the Soviet Union and Europe maintained commercial relationships in energy.

A week later, such thinking looks naive. The “shock and awe” financial sanctions, especially those aimed at Russia’s central bank, exceed anything previously seen, but the shortcoming is obvious: if you really want to hit the Russian economy hard, the place to aim is its energy export sector, a part that has been spared sanctions so far and generates hundreds of millions of dollars daily. The point is made repeatedly by Ukrainian officials in their appeals for the trade to cease, and its moral force is hammered home with every fresh Russian atrocity.

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Germany unites behind chancellor’s historic U-turn on arming Ukraine

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Olaf Scholz accused of failing to consult over volte-face on military policy, but coalition partners and public back him

The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, ambushed his own party and coalition partners when he announced a historic 180-degree policy turn on defence spending and exporting lethal weapons, but for now he seems to be riding a wave of broad public support.

In a speech in front of the Bundestag on Sunday, Scholz crossed several red lines held by his own party in less than half an hour, when he announced that Germany would send missiles and anti-tank weapons to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression and set up a special €100bn (£83bn) fund to modernise its own forces. “A turning point in the history of our continent” called for an appropriate response, he said.

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Weapons from the west vital if Ukraine is to halt Russian advance

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Analysis: previously there has been a reluctance to supply arms to the under-siege state, but that appears to be changing

Since the outbreak of fighting last week and after years of reluctance, western countries have promised to send thousands of anti-tank and hundreds of anti-aircraft weapons to Ukraine, but they will have to get supplies to the frontline quickly if they are to be effective.

Germany in the past few days broke with decades of anti-rearmament tradition to send 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger anti-aircraft missile systems, while Sweden agreed to send 5,000 next generation light anti-tank weapons (NLAWs).

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Germany’s ‘Putin-caressers’ start coming to terms with their naivety

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Analysis: politicians who believed Putin could be ‘tamed by empathy and accommodation’ are having to hurriedly rethink their positions

Prominent figures in Germany are coming under increasing pressure to publicly distance themselves from Vladimir Putin amid accusations that they are bringing shame on the country and themselves.

The range of so-called Putin-Versteher (Putin-understanders) – those who have sought to explain or justify the Russian leader’s actions – include figures from the far-left Die Linke and the far-right AfD, as well as members of the Social Democrats and some conservatives who have tried to keep him on side in the interests of their constituents and German energy security.

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