By Meghan McLaughlin

When Russia invaded Ukraine and weaponized its gas supplies in 2022, Europe faced an energy crisis that shocked the continent – but it should not have. For years, European countries have relied heavily on Russian energy despite increasing strategic risks, indicating that this dependence was a calculated choice rather than an inevitable reality. This vulnerability manifested itself through various long-term supply contracts, major infrastructure projects such as the Nord Stream pipelines, and consistent political messaging that downplayed potential geopolitical consequences. European dependence on Russian energy resulted from multiple interrelated failures; including Germany’s systemic prioritization of economic ties over security warnings, the EU’s structural inability to coordinate member state policies, and powerful domestic political resistance to diversification efforts despite repeated crises. These failures, rooted in institutional weaknesses, left Europe vulnerable to energy weaponization that dramatically spiked in 2022. The sustained complacency of German political elites, alongside economic and political interests tied to maintaining stable relations with the Russian Federation, ultimately prioritized economic benefits over security and pressure to adopt alternative energy sources. The 2022 crisis thus represents the culmination of policy decisions that consistently favored short-term economic gains over long-term strategic autonomy.

However, it also revealed a deep pattern beneath the strategic failure itself. The corporate actors most embedded in Russian energy, particularly BASF and its subsidiary Wintershall, were not required to absorb the costs of a dependence they helped to create. Germany’s decision to proceed with its nuclear phase-out in April 2023, in the midst of an energy crisis, extended household exposure to elevated gas prices while protecting the gas-dependent industrial sector. The government’s emergency spending, including the €200 billion protective shield and subsequent Merz-era subsidy decisions, consistently prioritized industrial users over citizens. Together, these patterns suggest that the transition was managed in ways that protected incumbent interests through the same policy access and institutional embeddedness that shaped German dependence on Russian energy in the first place.

The Making of Dependence

Germany’s role as Europe’s largest energy consumer and economy has shaped both its national policies and influenced neighboring countries, with Austria and other Central European states following Berlin’s lead in creating a hub of dependence on Russian oil and gas. German energy policy effectively set the template for Central European energy strategy, as Germany’s bilateral agreements with Russia created a framework that smaller economies adopted or accommodated. Germany imported approximately 45.84 billion cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas from Russia, a dependency Berlin’s policymakers defended as commercially rational, but in actuality was a profound vulnerability.[1] The origins of this relationship extend back to the 1960s, when West Germany’s need for cheap energy and the Soviet Union’s vast (but inaccessible) reserves created the conditions to form a partnership between the two. Rather than simply purchasing gas on the open market, Germany helped co-construct the Soviet pipeline infrastructure itself, meaning that dependency was jointly built rather than directly imposed.

This pattern of collaboration continued though the 1970s, when the socialist coalition in West Germany approved further pipeline agreements despite opposition from the Reagan administration. The collapse of the Soviet Union created a new opening, as a chaotic and economically desperate Russia sought Western markets, with Germany remaining the one major economy willing to engage on terms favorable to both entities. The technical dimension of this collaboration deepened considerably in the years that followed, as German firms helped Russian counterparts build the wet gas separation plants in Western Siberia that made large-scale export possible, and then developed the gas fields themselves specifically to supply German demand. By 2007, Russia was directing Germany toward some of its most productive reserves in arrangements that resembled a political relationship far more than a commercial one, with institutional lock-in now embedded in the physical infrastructure of energy production.[2]

When Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Europe’s long-standing vulnerabilities were exposed within months as gas supplies were weaponized and prices surged. The crisis revealed how policy choices made over decades had created dependencies for Russia to strategically exploit. Ukraine, despite its own substantial national gas reserves that have been ignored for decades, relied on Russia for 70% of its natural-gas supplies. Six other European nations relied on Russia for 100% of their gas, another seven countries received 50% of their gas from Russia, with several others following with a 25-35% dependence on the same source.[3] These dependencies were not evenly distributed throughout Europe, as Eastern European states saw the geopolitical risks more clearly than Western European countries. This divergence created a fundamental tension between member states that prioritized economic efficiency over those that prioritized security. Moscow capitalized on these divisions through pipeline diplomacy, strengthening its influence over Western Europe while isolating Eastern members, resulting in Russia turning energy supply routes into powerful instruments of political leverage.

Eastern Europeans paid substantially higher gas prices than Germany, establishing that the pre-2022 arrangement already distributed costs asymmetrically with Germany subsidized by the terms of its bilateral agreements.[4] This asymmetry reflected a broader pattern in which Russia converted energy relationships into instruments of political leverage, a dynamic Eastern European governments understood from experience, but Western policymakers consistently dismissed as regional disputes instead of rehearsals for a broader coercive strategy.[5] While Russia perfected its tactics of energy coercion against individual states, the European Union struggled to mount a coherent response to these growing threats.[6] In 1991, the EU launched the Energy Charter Declaration to promote energy cooperation and diversify Europe’s energy supply. This led to the 1994 Energy Charter Treaty, which established a framework of rules to promote international energy cooperation, providing mechanisms for dispute resolution, the promotion of free trade, energy efficiency, and the freedom of energy transit.[7] However, these frameworks created bureaucratic structures without the political will to challenge powerful economic interests or compel member states to act against their perceived national interests.

Since the signing of these treaties, the European Commission has used its existing competencies to promote European energy policy through an internal gas and electricity market, but this changed in 2005 when a German-Russian gas pipeline agreement sparked a newfound sense of urgency for a more coordinated energy strategy: Nord Stream 1. During this time, Germany and Russia agreed to build a gas pipeline that would connect the countries under the Baltic Sea, claiming it would significantly enhance the European energy supply. However, this agreement simultaneously highlighted the EU’s structural vulnerabilities as member states continued to prioritize bilateral deals over coordination as a single entity. While internal strife continued, Russia’s gas monopoly (Gazprom) temporarily suspended gas imports to Ukraine in December of 2005 as part of a dispute over price increases, and within hours several other European nations noted drops in their pipeline pressure up to thirty percent. An almost identical dispute between Russia and Belarus occurred in January 2007, further exposing Europe’s fragmented energy governance and overreliance on a single supplier.[8] These crises should have served as decisive wake-up calls, demonstrating Russia’s willingness to weaponize energy for political leverage. Instead, they were deemed to be temporary disruptions. This highlighted the inadequacy of European political elites to implement cohesive diversification methods which left countries like Germany, the EU’s largest energy consumer, particularly vulnerable.

Germany’s dependence on Russian energy both compromised its own energy security and set a dangerous precedent that influenced neighboring states to deepen their own reliance on Russian gas.[9] The logic of “Wandel durch Handel” (change through trade) sustained this arrangement and the Nord Stream pipelines epitomize this dynamic; Germany endorsed NS-2 by arguing it “was a purely or at least primarily commercial project that [would] strengthen European energy security.” This framing downplayed geopolitical concerns raised by allies, while ignoring how the pipeline would serve Russian strategic interests through bypassing Ukraine and dividing the EU.[10] Although promoted as a means to strengthen European energy security, both Nord Stream 1 and 2 bound Germany more tightly than ever to Russian gas supplies, with Berlin resisting pressures for diversification even as Central European countries like Poland and the Baltic states raised concerns. From Russia’s perspective, the project served as a tool to enhance their geopolitical influence, bringing Germany closer while deepening divisions within the EU to undermine their collective bargaining power.[11]

Germany’s resistance to diversification also revealed a transatlantic divergence in threat perception. American policymakers, influenced by their Cold War experience and geographic distance from Russian energy leverage, view energy dependence from a security perspective. German policymakers were more economically intertwined with Russia, leading them to believe that economic integration may transform Russia into a reliable partner, whose actions would be constrained by mutual economic interests and believed that commercial interdependence would moderate Russian behavior. Germany served as the main interlocutor between Russia and the West, playing a mediator role that was most evident during the Cold War. This role became a liability when it prevented Germany from realizing how dramatically Russian strategy had shifted under Putin’s increasingly authoritarian foreign policy. Politically, domestic divisions within Germany shaped Berlin’s approach to confronting Russia. In the former East Germany, there was a larger acceptance of Russia’s actions, including its annexation of Crimea in 2014, due to lingering historical ties. Germany is also home to thousands of migrants from Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan (mostly living in East Germany) who migrated after the collapse of the Soviet Union, creating a personal connection for many to the region. The legacy of Ostpolitik, the Cold War-era policy of engagement with the East, retained strong influence within German political circles.[12] The result was a political landscape in which any leader that proposed a reorientation away from Russian energy faced resistance, framed as a betrayal of Germany’s post-war commitment to reconciliation between the East and West.

A close alignment between corporate lobbying and policymaking reinforced Germany’s unwillingness to diversify from Russian energy, placing economic considerations above geopolitical risks. The timing of these debates, during and immediately after Europe’s worst economic crisis in generations, meant that job preservation and economic stability took precedence for policymakers and the public. Industrial sectors dependent on affordable Russian gas (most notably fertilizers, manufacturing, steel, chemicals, etc.) framed energy diversification as a direct threat to competitiveness. Moreover, the institutional architecture of EU energy policy reinforced this inertia through member-states retaining sovereignty over supply contracts with Russia. This collective prioritization of short-term economic needs over long-term security exemplifies the EU’s “fragile solidarity” in energy policy, built upon a shared unwillingness to disrupt profitable relationships with Russia.[13]

Corporate Power and Political Access

Germany functioned as the cornerstone of EU energy dependence through its deep political and economic ties with Russian industrial sectors, cemented by long-term contracts and infrastructure investments that prioritized economic benefits over security considerations.[14] This complacency, rooted in a genuine belief that economic interdependence would moderate Russian behavior, proved to be a fundamental mistake.[15] Economically, German business leaders wielded considerable influence in resisting sanctions. By 2022, approximately six thousand German businesses invested in Russia, representing cumulative allocations worth around twenty billion dollars. This created a powerful corporate alliance that was strongly opposed to any measure that would jeopardize these economic ties. These business elites lobbied heavily against sanctions, viewing them as detrimental to German economic interests and warning of potential job losses and reduced profits that would ripple through supply chains and regional economies heavily dependent on Russian trade. This was most notably seen when Badische Anilin-und Soda-Fabrik (BASF)’s CEO Martin Brudermüller lobbied to maintain Russian gas flows out of fear that cutting off Russian supplies “could throw the German economy into its biggest crisis since the end of World War Two.”[16] No corporate actor illustrates the depth of German-Russia energy entanglement more concretely than the multinational chemical producer, BASF, as they had been cooperating since 1990 with Gazprom when they laid the groundwork for their partnership through a long-term agreement to market Russian natural gas in Germany. Over the following 25 years they jointly supplied the European market with more than 700 billion cubic meters of natural gas through their joint ventures.[17] The relationship extended well beyond commercial gas purchasing, with the two companies working together in Siberia, Achimgaz, and Severnftegazprom, producing natural gas together for approximately ten years.

In 2015, Wintershall (owned by BASF) acquired a 25% stake in Blocks IV and V of the Achimov Formation in the Urengoy natural gas and condensate field in West Siberia.[18] BASF was embedded in Russian production infrastructure at the operational level, with a direct financial interest in the value of reserves that could only be realized through continued export to Europe. In July 2015, just one year after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, BASF and Gazprom signed a Memorandum of Understanding, committing Wintershall to participate in the expansion of the North Stream Pipelines and plans for two additional pipelines capable of transporting up to 55 bcm of Russian natural gas directly to Germany.[19] When this relationship finally ended after the 2022 invasion, BASF was forced to book €7.3 billion in non-cash impairments covering its stake in Nord Stream and its remaining interest in Wintershall DEA, a figure that reflects the depth of three decades of accumulated lock-in and the outsized influence BASF retained in shaping the post-crisis transition.[20]

The same pattern of deep corporate ties extended into the financial sector, with Deutsche Bank’s entanglement with Russian interests moving well beyond conventional banking in the early 2000s when they aggressively pursued expansion in Moscow. Between 2011 and 2018, Deutsche Bank paid $14.5 billion in fines, with exposure to questionable Russian money becoming a recurring theme, including a $10 billion mirror trade scheme run out of its Moscow branch in which rubles were converted into dollars via fake trades on behalf of Russian clients.[21] As a result, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority imposed its largest ever fine of £163 million and the New York Department of Financial Services fined the bank a further $425 million. Deutsche Bank’s Russian clients during this period included individuals with close ties to the Kremlin, and they were also implicated in the Global Laundromat, a vast money-laundering operation used by Russian criminals with links to the Kremlin and the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) to move funds into the Western financial system, with the total cash involved potentially reaching $80 billion.[22]

After 2022, that exposure became a liability, with a St. Petersburg court seizing approximately €238.6 million of Deutsche Bank’s assets in Russia, including property and account holdings, as part of a lawsuit brought by RusChemAlliance, a Gazprom subsidiary, after Deutsche Bank refused to fulfill bank guarantee obligations on a gas processing and LNG production facility project on the grounds that payment would violate European sanctions.[23] The bank found itself caught between the sanctions regime it was legally required to honor and the Russian legal system it had spent decades operating within, a contradiction that illustrates the cost of allowing financial institutions to become so deeply enmeshed in a geopolitical adversary’s energy infrastructure that separating them becomes a legal crisis in its own right. This entanglement was actively maintained by a network of political actors whose career incentives aligned with deepening the relationship rather than scrutinizing it.

The revolving door between German energy policy and the Russian gas sector operated at the highest levels of government, with senior officials moving between positions of regulatory authority and the corporate structures they had helped to build, sustaining the relationship long after its strategic logic had become indefensible. Former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder signed the original Nord Stream agreement with Gazprom weeks before leaving the chancellorship in November 2005, then assumed the chairmanship of the Nord Stream AG shareholders’ committee almost immediately after leaving office, a path the European Parliament’s 2022 resolution identified as “a glaring example of a revolving door” that served to maintain EU dependence on Russian state energy monopolies.[24] Former Economy and Energy Minister Sigmar Gabriel, who approved the sale of Germany’s largest domestic gas storage infrastructure to Gazprom, has since repositioned himself at Atlantik-Brücke and the Eurasia Group.[25] Former German Foreign Minister and current Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier advocated for pipeline engagement as recently as 2021, describing Nord Stream as the last remaining “bridge” between Russia and Europe, before publicly conceding after the invasion that the policy had been a clear error.[26]

The Merkel Years and Their Aftermath

Characterizing German energy policy as mere complacency, however, would be a misunderstanding of what Berlin was attempting. Under Chancellor Angela Merkel, Germany pursued what was arguably the only coherent Western strategy for managing Russia, and for a time it achieved results. Germany’s approach was a deliberate continuation of Ostpolitik’s core logic, fostering economic cooperation rather than confrontation on the principle that engagement could gradually transform the relationship.[27] Merkel’s upbringing in East Germany gave her firsthand experience with Soviet power, and her fluency in Russian allowed her to engage with Putin directly in ways no other Western leader could. Even so, she was not naive about the Kremlin, and after the annexation of Crimea, she even reportedly told President Obama that Putin was “living in another world.”[28] Still, she believed that a Russia economically tied to Europe was safer than a Russia left on its own, and for over a decade the results gave her reason to think she was right. She brokered the Minsk agreements that, while deeply flawed, kept the conflict in eastern Ukraine from becoming a full-scale war for eight years.[29]

What makes her approach particularly significant is its singularity, as she was effectively the only Western leader with a sustained Russia strategy at all. Obama’s “reset” collapsed after 2014 without replacement, Macron’s later engagement attempts were improvised and lacked institutional depth, and the United Kingdom, preoccupied with Brexit, had effectively withdrawn from continental security diplomacy. However, the strategy contained a fatal flaw: Merkel’s framework assumed that Putin’s objectives could be met through economic integration, and that he ultimately wanted stability and a seat at the European table. What Merkel’s framework did not account for was that Putin’s goals went far beyond economic partnership, as he sought to redraw post-Cold War borders and reassert Russian dominance over the former Soviet space. The interdependence she had cultivated to constrain him ultimately served to finance those very ambitions and the strategy was further weakened by the absence of any credible threat behind it. When Russia annexed Crimea, Merkel declared that “the fundamentals of Ostpolitik had not changed” and continued pursuing Nord Stream 2, sending the message that even the seizure of foreign territory would not be enough to disrupt the commercial relationship and turning what was meant to constrain Russian behavior into a source of Russian strength.[30] Merkel’s departure from the chancellorship in December 2021, the relationships and institutional knowledge she had built over sixteen years could not be transferred to her successor. The strategy she built was the most serious Western attempt to manage Russia through economic integration, and its ultimate failure revealed the dangers of pursuing engagement without consequences, while assuming that a leader driven by political ambition will respond to commercial logic.

The Nuclear Question

These failures also had a domestic dimension, visible in Germany’s decision to shut down its final nuclear plants in the middle of the very crisis its energy strategy had helped create. On April 15, 2023, Germany shut down its last three nuclear power plants (Emsland, Isar 2, and Neckarwestheim), ending a nuclear era that spanned more than six decades.[31] This decision to proceed with its nuclear phase-out at this time is one of the most consequential and contested energy policy choices of the post-2022 period. The closure was not technically inevitable, with a report by the Radiant Energy Group finding that at least eight German reactors could be restarted (some within nine months) for a cost of €100-200 million each, a price roughly equivalent to two months of operating profit at prevailing energy prices. In addition, the plants were in good physical condition, operating staff remained available and willing to return, and fuel procurement was logistically achievable. Following the closures, polling conducted in July 2023 found that 67% of Germans supported the continued use of nuclear energy.[32] The decision to proceed regardless was largely driven by the Green Party, a coalition partner whose foundational political identity since the 1970s had been built around nuclear opposition and whose environmental minister declared nuclear power to be neither green nor sustainable. What the government was unwilling to do for the existing plants it later proved willing to fund in a different form: in October 2025, the German government pledged more than €2 billion by 2029 for nuclear fusion research and pilot projects, describing fusion energy as promising electricity that is base-load capable, clean, safe, and resource-efficient.[33]

The closure’s distributional costs were direct and measurable because even though Germany planned to replace the 6% of electricity generated by the three plants with renewables, in reality the reductions in nuclear energy were primarily offset by increases in coal. Germany had long planned its energy system and heavy industries around inexpensive gas from Russian pipelines, and with nuclear off the table, gas remained structurally embedded in the electricity mix at the same moment prices were highest. Restarting eight reactors could have added over 85 terawatt-hours of electricity annually at an operating cost of approximately €25 per megawatt-hour, equivalent to 40% of total German industrial electricity demand, and far below the prevailing spot market rates that households and industry faced during the crisis.[34] The distributional consequences followed, as removing baseload nuclear capacity extended Germany’s dependence on gas-indexed electricity, and the costs were absorbed primarily by households. The Green Party’s ideological commitment to the phase-out is an insufficient explanation on its own, because ideology does not explain why the same government that declined to extend functioning low-carbon plants subsequently committed billions to experimental nuclear technology. The more revealing explanation is that the political conditions making extension impossible in 2023 functioned, regardless of intent, to protect the interests of gas-dependent industrial incumbents whose competitiveness depended on gas remaining structurally embedded in the electricity mix.

Cost Allocation in the Post-2022 Transition and Concluding Thoughts

When Russia weaponized its energy supply in 2022, the costs did not fall on those who had built the dependence.[35] German household gas prices rose from 7.06 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2021 to 20.04 cents by the fourth quarter of 2022. The government’s €200 billion protective shield provided temporary relief without addressing structural cost exposure. As of 2025, German household electricity prices remain approximately 20% above 2021 levels, while the Merz government has limited electricity price subsidies to industrial users rather than households.[36] Germany’s rapid pivot, halting Nord Stream 2 and signing long-term LNG agreements with Qatar and the United States, confirmed that the logistical barriers to diversification had always been surmountable.[37] However, these new arrangements carry their own risks: LNG exposes Europe to global price volatility and competition with Asian buyers, Qatari supply ties European energy security to Middle Eastern political dynamics, and growing dependence on American LNG links the continent's energy future to the trajectory of transatlantic relations.[38] The transformation following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrates that change was always possible, it just required the political will that had been absent for years. The full cost of that unwillingness is now visible in Germany’s industrial landscape, as the cheap Russian energy that sustained German manufacturing competitiveness for decades is gone. Energy-intensive sectors including chemicals, steel, and fertilizer production have faced plant closures, reduced output, and relocation, raising fundamental questions about the long-term viability of Germany’s industrial model.

Germany’s industrial losses are the most visible consequence, but Europe has also not fully severed the relationship it claims to have abandoned. This is most legible in the pressure European allies have placed on Ukraine to limit its strikes on Russian energy infrastructure, a demand Zelensky said he would only consider if Russia stopped its own attacks on Ukrainian energy facilities. The implicit logic of that request sits uneasily alongside any genuine commitment to energy independence, and if European governments were truly determined to move away from Russian energy, the destruction of Russian energy infrastructure would serve their states strategic interests rather than threaten them. That they asked Ukraine to hold back reveals how much residual exposure remains, and even more so how quickly the idea of energy sovereignty is dismissed when Russian supply disruptions threaten European markets and prices.[39] Europe may have declared the era of Russian energy over, but as long as the incentives that built that era remain intact, the declaration remains incomplete.

Meghan McLaughlin is a dual MA/MSc graduate student at Columbia University and the London School of Economics, pursuing studies focused around global affairs. She completed her undergraduate at San Diego State University, graduating with a BA in political science along with a certificate in human rights. Meghan also spent 2 years at the United States Military Academy (West Point).

Works Cited

Al Jazeera. “Russia Seizes European Banks’ Assets as Part of a Lawsuit.” 18 May 2024.

Atlantic Council. “Two Years On: What the Russian Invasion of Ukraine Means for Energy Security and Net-Zero Emissions.” Feb. 2024.

AP News. “Russian Court Freezes Assets of Two German Banks in Gas Project Dispute.” 19 May 2024.

Baker, Peter. “Pressure Rising as Obama Works to Rein In Russia.” New York Times, March 4, 2014.

BASF. “BASF and Gazprom Sign Memorandum of Understanding on Further Expansion of Partnership” Press release, July 2015.

BASF. “BASF/Wintershall and Gazprom Celebrate 25-Year Partnership.” Press release, October 2015.

BASF. “Milestones in BASF's History.” basf.com.

BASF. “Wintershall Acquires Stakes in Blocks IV and V of the Achimov Formation” Press release, October 2015.

BBC. “Zelensky Says Allies Asked Him to Scale Back Attacks on Russian Energy.” 2026.

Belkin, Paul. “The European Union's Energy Security Challenges.” Connections, vol. 7, no. 1, 2008, pp. 76–102.

Brooks, Anita. “Europe’s Messy Russian Gas Divorce.” Brookings Institution, 2024.

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “How Eastern Europe Overhauled Its Natural Gas Market.” December 2025.

Centre for Eastern Studies. “German Energy Companies Lobby for Nord Stream 2.” 21 Sept, 2016.

Chemical ESG. “The Party's Over: BASF Pulls Out of Russia and Books €7.3B in Charges.” 2023.

Clean Energy Wire. “German Government Pledges More than €2 Billion for Nuclear Fusion.” 2 October 2025.

Clean Energy Wire. “Nord Stream 2: Twists and Turns of a Controversial Gas Pipeline.” 2025.

Cleary Gottlieb. “Gazprom in Complex Asset Swap Transaction with BASF/Wintershall.” clearygottlieb.com.

CNN. “Germany Shuts Down Its Last Three Nuclear Power Plants.” 15 April 2023.

Columbia University SIPA, Center on Global Energy Policy. “Understanding Germany's Gas Price Brake.” 2023.

ConocoPhillips. “ConocoPhillips and QatarEnergy Agree to Provide Reliable LNG Supply to Germany” 2022.

DW. “Driven by Greed: The Deutsche Bank Story – Putin's Bank.” 2024.

DW. “Germany's Nuclear Phase-Out and EU Energy Policy.” 2025.

Eurasia Group. “Sigmar Gabriel, Former Vice Chancellor and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Germany, Joins Eurasia Group as Senior Advisor.” 2019.

Euronews. “MEPs Demand Sanctions on Schröder over His Ties with Russian Firms.” 19 May 2022.

Euronews. “Germany's President Admits Errors in Past Dialogue Efforts with Russia.” April 5, 2022.

European Parliament. “Question for Written Answer P-004453/2019 to the Commission.” 19 Dec. 2019.

European Parliamentary Research Service. “Russia's War on Ukraine: The Impact on EU Energy Security” Oct. 2022.

Forsberg, Tuomas. “From Ostpolitik to 'Forstpolitik'? Merkel, Putin and German Foreign Policy Towards Russia.” International Affairs, vol. 92, no. 1, 2016, pp. 21-42.

Gidadhubli, R. G. “Oil and Politics in Russia: Tightening Grip on Pipelines.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 41, no. 31, 2006, pp. 3358–60.

Guardian, The. “Deutsche Bank Faces Action over $20bn Russian Money-Laundering Scheme.” 17 April 2019.

Karakullukçu, Memduh. “EU Energy Policy: Sustained by Fragile Solidarity, Indispensable for Eurasian Security.” PRISM, vol. 6, no. 2, 2016, pp. 106–25.

Kardas, Szymon. “The Great Troublemaker: Nord Stream 2 in Russia's Foreign Energy Policy.” International Issues & Slovak Foreign Policy Affairs, vol. 28, no. 3/4, 2019, pp. 25–44.

Ma, Zhihui, et al. “The Impact of the Ukraine Crisis on the Planning of Russian-European Natural Gas Pipeline Projects.” Journal of Coastal Research, 2019, pp. 392–401.

McKillop, Andrew. “Recasting Europe's Energy Dependence on Russia.” Energy & Environment, vol. 25, no. 2, 2014, pp. 415–17.

McMillan, Stuart. “Germany's Relations with Russia: Willing Fools or Trusted Intermediaries?” New Zealand International Review, vol. 41, no. 4, 2016, pp. 6–9.

Marshall Center for Security Studies. “Europe's Dependence on Russian Natural Gas: Perspectives and Recommendations for a Long-term Strategy.” marshallcenter.org.

Morningstar/MarketWatch. “The Cost of Germany's Long and Painful Nuclear Regret.” 2026.

Nowak, Zuzanna, et al. “Russia's Energy Policy: The EU Case.” Global Energy Debates and the Eastern Mediterranean, edited by Ayla Gürel Moran, Atlantic Council, 2016, pp. 23–28.

OCCRP. “US Investigators Expand Deutsche Bank Money Laundering Probe into Russian Trades.” 26 October 2015.

Oil & Gas Journal. “BASF, Gazprom to Develop Russia Gas Field.” 15 April 2006.

Radiant Energy Group. “Restart of Germany's Reactors: Can It Be Done?” 18 July 2023.

Reuters. “Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank Block Gazprom Subsidiary's Russian Lawsuits.” 11 October 2023.

Smith Stegen, Karen. “Deconstructing the ‘Energy Weapon’: Russia’s Threat to Europe as Case Study.” Energy Policy, vol. 39, no. 10, Oct. 2011, pp. 6505–13.

Stoicescu, Kalev. Germany, Russia, and Energy Politics. International Centre for Defence and Security, 2022.

Tichý, Lukáš, and Petr Kratochvíl. “The EU-Russia Energy Relations under the Prism of the Political Discourse.” Perspectives, vol. 22, no. 1, 2014, pp. 5–32.

Umbach, Frank. Commercial Project or Strategic Disorientation?: The Controversial Nord Stream 2 Gas Pipeline. Federal Academy for Security Policy, 2018.

Umland, Andreas, “Merkel’s Ambivalent Legacy in Post-Soviet Eastern Europe,” Foreign Policy Association, 2025.

U.S. Department of State. “Fact Sheet on U.S. Opposition to Nord Stream 2.” 2017–2021.

Venture Global LNG. “Venture Global and SEFE Announce Expansion of LNG Partnership.” 2025

World Nuclear News. “Germany Boosts Funding for Fusion Research.” 2 October 2025.

[1] Kalev Stoicescu, Germany, Russia, and Energy Politics (International Centre for Defence and Security, 2022), 2.

[2] Oil & Gas Journal, “BASF, Gazprom to Develop Russia Gas Field,” April 15, 2006.

[3] Andrew McKillop, “Recasting Europe's Energy Dependence on Russia,” Energy & Environment 25, no. 2 (2014), 415.

[4] Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “How Eastern Europe Overhauled Its Natural Gas Market,” 2025.

[5] Karen Smith Stegen, “Deconstructing the ‘Energy Weapon’: Russia’s Threat to Europe as Case Study,” Energy Policy 39, no. 10, 2011.

[6] Zuzanna Nowak et al., “Russia's Energy Policy: The EU Case,” in Global Energy Debates and the Eastern Mediterranean, ed. Ayla Gürel Moran (Atlantic Council, 2016), 5

[7] Paul Belkin, “The European Union's Energy Security Challenges,” Connections 7, no. 1 (2008), 79.

[8] Belkin, “The European Union's Energy Security Challenges,” 80.

[9] Kardas, “The Great Troublemaker: Nord Stream 2 in Russia's Foreign Energy Policy,” 42.

[10] Frank Umbach, Commercial Project or Strategic Disorientation?: The Controversial Nord Stream 2 Gas Pipeline (Federal Academy for Security Policy, 2018), 1.

[11] Szymon Kardas, “The Great Troublemaker: Nord. Stream 2 in Russia's Foreign Energy Policy,” International Issues & Slovak Foreign Policy Affairs 28, no. 3/4 (2019), 32.

[12] McMillan, “Germany's Relations with Russia: Willing Fools or Trusted Intermediaries?,” 7.

[13] Karakullukçu, “EU Energy Policy: Sustained by Fragile Solidarity, Indispensable for Eurasian Security,” 107.

[14] Stuart McMillan, “Germany's Relations with Russia: Willing Fools or Trusted Intermediaries?” New Zealand International Review 41, no. 4 (2016), 6.

[15] Stoicescu, Germany, Russia, and Energy Politics, 2.

[16] Centre for Eastern Studies, “German Energy Companies Lobby for Nord Stream 2,” 2016.

[17] BASF, “Milestones in BASF's History,” 2022; Cleary Gottlieb, “Gazprom in Complex Asset Swap Transaction with BASF/Wintershall,” 2013.

[18] BASF, “BASF and Gazprom Expand Partnership: Wintershall Acquires Stakes in Blocks IV and V of the Achimov Formation,” 2015.

[19] BASF, “BASF and Gazprom Sign Memorandum of Understanding on Further Expansion of Partnership,” 2015.

[20] Chemical ESG, “The Party's Over: BASF Pulls Out of Russia and Books €7.3B in Charges,” 2023; Brookings Institution, “Europe's Messy Russian Gas Divorce,” 2024.

[21] DW, “Driven by Greed: The Deutsche Bank Story - Putin's Bank,” 2024; OCCRP, “US Investigators Expand Deutsche Bank Money Laundering Probe into Russian Trades,” 2015.

[22] The Guardian, “Deutsche Bank Faces Action over $20bn Russian Money-Laundering Scheme,” 2019.

[23] AP News, “Deutsche Bank Assets Frozen over Sanctions, Gas, Russia,” 2024; Reuters, “Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank Block Gazprom Subsidiary's Russian Lawsuits,” 2023.

[24] Euronews, “MEPs Demand Sanctions on Schröder over His Ties with Russian Firms.” 2022

[25] Clean Energy Wire, “Nord Stream 2: Twists and Turns of a Controversial Gas Pipeline,” 2025; Eurasia Group, “Sigmar Gabriel, Former Vice Chancellor and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Germany, Joins Eurasia Group as Senior Advisor,” 2019.

[26] Euronews, "Germany's President Admits Errors in Past Dialogue Efforts with Russia," April 5, 2022.

[27] Forsberg, Tuomas, “From Ostpolitik to 'Frostpolitik'? Merkel, Putin and German Foreign Policy Towards Russia,” International Affairs, vol. 92, no. 1, 2016, 21-42

[28] Baker, Peter, “Pressure Rising as Obama Works to Rein In Russia,” New York Times, 2014

[29] Umland, Andreas, “Merkel's Ambivalent Legacy in Post-Soviet Eastern Europe: German Ostpolitik in the Shadow of Russia's Imperial Revenge, “Foreign Policy Association, 2025

[30] Tuomas, “From Ostpolitik to ‘Frostpolitik’? Merkel, Putin and German Foreign Policy Towards Russia,” 21-42

[31] CNN, “Germany Shuts Down Its Last Three Nuclear Power Plants,” 2023; DW, “Germany's Nuclear Phase-Out and EU Energy Policy,” 2025.

[32] Radiant Energy Group, “Restart of Germany's Reactors: Can It Be Done?” 2023.

[33] Clean Energy Wire, “German Government Pledges More than €2 Billion for Nuclear Fusion,” 2025; World Nuclear News, “Germany Boosts Funding for Fusion Research,” 2025.

[34] Radiant Energy Group, “Restart of Germany's Reactors: Can It Be Done?” 2023.

[35] Atlantic Council, “Two Years On: What the Russian Invasion of Ukraine Means for Energy Security and Net-Zero Emissions,” 2024; European Parliamentary Research Service, “Russia’s War on Ukraine: The Impact on EU Energy Security,” 2022.

[36] Columbia University SIPA, Center on Global Energy Policy, “Understanding Germany’s Gas Price Brake,” 2023.

[37] Venture Global LNG, “Venture Global and SEFE Announce Expansion of LNG Partnership,” 2025

[38] Atlantic Council, “Two Years On,” 2024

[39] BBC, “Zelensky says allies asked him to scale back attacks on Russian energy,” 2026.