Germany is in a tough place dealing with Russia given their strong trade relationship : NPR & More News Here

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German Chancellor Olaf Scholz heads to Ukraine and Russia this week. Berlin and Moscow are big buying and selling companions, together with in the fuel pipeline Nord Stream 2. But, as Esme Nicholson studies, the Ukraine disaster is forcing Germany to reassess its relations with Russia.

ESME NICHOLSON, BYLINE: In the jap half of the German capital, Russia is nonetheless tangible nearly three many years after the Soviets left. Take a stroll down Karl-Marx-Allee, and you can be in Moscow. The huge boulevard was constructed from conflict rubble 70 years in the past. Flanked by grandiose socialist classicist condominium blocks, the avenue, then referred to as Stalinallee, was made large sufficient to accommodate Soviet tanks and East German army parades. Sixty-year-old Loria Weisskirchen grew up right here and says it isn’t simply the structure that has left its mark.

LORITA WEISSKIRCHEN: (Through interpreter) When it involves Russia, us East Germans have blended emotions. We have been taught to imagine the Soviets have been our pals. It’s onerous to out of the blue cease believing that, but it surely’s clear that Russia, like China, is a world energy and doubtlessly harmful. And but we can not seem to settle for this. We do not wish to.

NICHOLSON: This view is not restricted to these from the previous East. If something, up to date Germany’s permissive stance on Russia is the legacy of the previous West. Reunified Germany has continued the Ostpolitik of Willy Brandt, the West German chancellor in the Nineteen Seventies, who, in an try and foster dialogue and stability, established strong trade ties with Moscow.

JOHN LOUGH: This sort of philosophy has grown up in Germany that if you happen to trade with Russia, you stand a good probability of with the ability to change the general state of affairs to mutual benefit. That’s how they’d see it.

NICHOLSON: John Lough is the creator of the e-book “Germany’s Russia Problem.” He argues that Olaf Scholz urgently must pursue a new Ostpolitik, however stresses that this is as a lot about emotion because it is the economic system.

LOUGH: Germans and Russians have been the most effective of pals and the worst of enemies. Germans and Russians have what I name a bond of spilt blood. This is a particular relationship.

NICHOLSON: But Lough says this particular relationship is turning bitter, leaving Germany uncovered, significantly on the subject of fuel, one of many commodities that began flowing West as a results of Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik. The undeniable fact that Germany now depends on Russia for greater than half its fuel provide is partly down to a different former SPD chancellor, Gerhard Schroder, who sits on the boards of Nord Stream and Rosneft and is about to hitch that of Gazprom.

LOUGH: Schroder has turn into this incarnation of what they name in German the (talking German), someone who understands Russia, which is a sort of shorthand for someone who is an appeaser, who is ready to do precisely what the Russians need.

NICHOLSON: While Scholz has distanced himself from Schroder in latest days and insists that each one choices are on the desk on the subject of sanctions, he has refused to refer on to Nord Stream 2, a lot to the misery of Ukraine and its Eastern European neighbors. Michael Roth, chair of the Bundestag’s Foreign Affairs Committee and fellow Social Democrat, says Scholz’s perceived reticence is technique.

MICHAEL ROTH: (Through interpreter) We’re not about to debate the main points of potential sanctions in public. Putin could be the one one to revenue from that.

NICHOLSON: And again on Karl-Marx-Allee, 70-year-old Helga Ecken says earning profits is what it is all about.

HELGA ECKEN: (Through interpreter) I’m not a Putin fan, however I’m not anti-Russia both. Sure, we may do with out the threats in opposition to Ukraine, however Moscow stays an essential companion. We revenue from them, and so they revenue from us.

NICHOLSON: But with no signal of tensions easing between Russia and Ukraine, Germany’s new authorities might have to just accept that it is time to rethink the Ostpolitik of previous and its relations with Russia if it is to uphold its commitments to Ukraine and the West.

For NPR News, I’m Esme Nicholson in Berlin.

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