[continued from previous message]   
      
   Until January this year, Russia’s state-owned energy giant Gazprom   
   earned money from the gas flowing through Ukraine’s pipeline network   
   open image in gallery   
      
   But still we cannot sever that vulnerable spot with an arrow because   
   it’s our achilles heel too. In Germany, a fateful electoral deal with a   
   now long-departed Green coalition partner led to the closure of the   
   country’s nuclear power stations. That left Germany and its neighbours   
   dangerously dependent on cheap Russian gas. Europe’s pledges for net   
   zero have also helped rob the continent of the excess energy capacity it   
   would need to “just say no” to its addiction to Putin’s energy.   
      
   The price for this refusal to countenance economic suffering for the   
   sake of Ukraine has been paid by Ukrainians in blood. When Putin   
   launched his war he was sure that Europe’s talk of international law was   
   hypocritical nonsense – not least because he remembered that in the   
   aftermath of his 2014 invasion of Crimea, Germany’s chancellor Angela   
   Merkel swore that “military aggression in Europe cannot go unpunished”   
   and yet little more than a year later signed a €9.5bn deal to build a   
   second Nord Stream pipeline.   
      
   And though Putin has been undoubtedly surprised by the scale of Europe’s   
   military aid to Kyiv, ultimately he has been proved right about the   
   fundamental hypocrisy.   
      
   “Ukraine must win this war,” Von Der Leyen boldly told the assembled   
   European elites at the 2022 Davos conference. “And Putin’s aggression   
   must be a strategic failure.”   
      
   Though Ukraine has not exactly lost the war, it certainly has not won   
   it. And by the same token, while Putin may have failed to dominate   
   Ukraine, he has nonetheless succeeded in snapping up large chunks of it.   
   If a peace deal is struck, it will be on Putin’s terms.   
      
   That outcome could have been very different if the actions of Ukraine’s   
   self-declared allies had been as bold as their words.   
      
      
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