How the Russian Invasion of Ukraine Upended Germany

Previous October, I sat in the office of Klaus Emmerich, the chief union representative at the Garzweiler brown-coal mine in western Germany, as he shared his misgivings about the country’s celebrated approach to end burning coal. Germany’s develop-up of renewable electrical power was lagging and, presented that coal accounts for more than a quarter of its full electric power source, that meant it would have to count on yet another energy resource for the time remaining: natural gas, which arrived mostly from Russia. “We’re offering ourselves in excess of to the Russians,” Emmerich explained to me. “I have a undesirable sensation about it.”

Five months later on, Emmerich’s premonitions have borne out, powerfully. President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has unleashed civilian and navy carnage, ravaged metropolitan areas and despatched some two million people fleeing the state. As its outcomes have rippled across Europe and the earth, one particular consequence has absent underexamined: The invasion has upended the political and financial policies of Germany, […]