Germany’s Economic Ties to Russia Led to Slow Invasion Threat Response 

BERLIN — With nearly 100,000 Russian troops deployed near the Ukrainian border and poised to invade, international allies have begun to question Germany’s reliability.

Germany, under the new leadership of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, has been hesitant to take forceful measures in response to Russia’s aggression.

As U.S. and British troops were deployed to Poland, Denmark mobilized fighter jets to Lithuania and a frigate to the Baltic Sea, and France proposed sending forces to Romania.

But Germany declined to send military support in response to Russia’s threatening stance. Ukraine is not a member of the European Union or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and Russian President Vladimir Putin views NATO expansion to Ukraine as a threat.

For years, German leadership has been hesitant to take any action that might draw the ire of the Kremlin due to its deeply forged economic ties with the country. Stephen Szabo, a political scientist and educator who specializes in foreign policy, told The Well News Russia’s enduring stance on NATO expansion to its borders has been largely ignored by U.S. leadership.

“I do think that the U.S. continues to … disregard that and say, ‘Oh, well, that doesn’t really matter,’” Szabo said. “If the Russians were doing that in Mexico — and they did it in Cuba, obviously — the U.S. would take a very different position. So, I do think that the Germans sort of feel that they’re in the middle here.”

After Russia’s forceful annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, Germany chose to deploy some forces under NATO command to Lithuania. Scholz has indicated all options were on the table to prevent further Russian incursion into Ukraine but has avoided specifically mentioning the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline as one of those options.

Nord Stream 2 is a 764-mile natural gas pipeline that runs underneath the Baltic Sea and links Russia to the Baltic coast in Germany. President Joe Biden has threatened to block the pipeline’s operation should Russia invade Ukraine, but doing so would cause economic headaches for much of Europe, including Germany.

Germany is consistently one of Russia’s top trade partners, exporting roughly $27 billion in various goods in 2020, according to the CIA’s World Factbook. The annual trade turnover between the two countries exceeded $80 billion prior to sanctions imposed in 2014 over the annexation of Crimea.

“There’s always been this economic relationship between the two countries, [dating] way back to the czarist times,” Szabo told The Well News. “You have Germany taking advantage of Russian resources for its industrial machine, and the Russians getting industrial support and modernization from the Germans in exchange for energy. So, the energy relationship goes back a long way, but it certainly intensified in the last 50 years or so.”

Although Putin has denied plans to wage a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, tensions remain high as NATO countries bolster their presence in eastern Europe. The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine announced on Friday that more military aid had arrived in the capital of Kyiv, including Javelin anti-tank missiles.

Should the Russian army move across the border into Ukraine, millions of refugees are expected to flee the ensuing chaos. While ending the crisis through diplomacy might be beneficial overall, more sanctions against Russia could also spell trouble for Germany.

“They’ve confronted history, you have to give them credit for that,” Szabo said. “At the same time, too, they sometimes hide behind it to avoid doing stuff that might be painful to them. And I think that’s what’s happening with Ukraine right now. [Germany’s] basically saying, ‘Well, because of our terrible history, we never send arms to areas of conflict or crisis areas. We don’t want to make things worse, especially if Russia is involved.’” 

Reece can be reached at [email protected]