Germany is sweating these days with temperatures frequently exceeding 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) during the day. Normally at such times nobody thinks about the next winter. It's still so far away. But nothing is normal in the summer of 2022.
A war is raging on Europe's eastern border. The man who started this war, Russian President Vladimir Putin, is playing a perfidious game.
Apart from the annihilation of Ukraine, the Russian leader obviously has something else in mind: the division of the West. All those countries that have promoted things like the rule of law, freedom of expression, equality and tolerance are a provocation for someone like Putin.
Playing with the gas taps
So while Putin's troops keep raining artillery shells down on southeastern Ukraine, he is also fighting "unfriendly" Western countries with his other weapon of choice: Natural gas. Suddenly there's less gas for Austria, then less for Italy as if he had gas taps directly on his desk. On top of that, significantly less Russian gas has been flowing to western Europe via Ukraine.
Germany has also been punished. Lately its most important delivery line, the Baltic Sea pipeline Nord Stream 1, has been working at less than half of its capacity. Russia claims this is because of a turbine that was serviced in Canada and wasn't allowed to be sent back because of economic sanctions.
Well, now it's coming back after sanction rules were bent to allow its export. That means Russia can no longer use the excuse of the missing turbine to reduce supply to Germany. But the true test will come next week.
For the past few days Nord Stream 1 has been completely shut down for regularly scheduled maintenance and no gas flowed at all. On Thursday, the work should be finished. But will gas once again arrive at the western end of the line?
Germany's alarming dependency on Russia
If nothing comes flowing through it will be a hard winter for much of Europe. In Germany, gas storage facilities are currently only 65% full. This could lead to an enormous economic upheaval, since the continent has not been able to completely replace Russian gas with other suppliers, especially not at current Russian prices.
But that's exactly Putin's plan. He'll turn off the gas taps and that will lead to a severe economic slump and Western support for Ukraine will crumble.
Germany's successful business model of the past decades was based on importing cheap energy, specifically oil and gas from Russia. Anyone who questioned this system was usually ignored.
In September 2018 at the UN General Assembly, the then US President Donald Trump told Germany to look in the mirror. He said the county will become completely dependent on Russian energy if it doesn't change course immediately. In return he only got laughter and head-shaking from the German delegation, above all from the then Foreign Minister Heiko Maas.
No fracking in our backyard
Later, when the Americans imposed sanctions on companies involved in the nearly completed Nord Stream 2 pipeline, many Germans suspected a backhanded economic trick. Many thought the Americans only wanted to sell their dirty fracked gas.
Now the German economy minister is begging Washington to get as much of the stuff as possible. At the same time, when the idea of producing gas in Germany by fracking comes up all you hear is "no way, we're not destroying our environment!" This despite the fact that the amount of natural gas that could be produced this way would easily be enough for self-sufficiency for two years.
It's a similar situation with hard coal, which is now being imported again. A large proportion of the imported coal is from Colombia, where it is often mined under inhumane conditions. And the discussion about extending the service life of the three remaining German nuclear power plants is degenerating into a pseudo-moral sham debate.
With all this going on, the federal government, cities and local communities are diligently making emergency plans for the fall and winter. Media outlets are outdoing each other with headlines about the coming winter of disaster — and the man sitting in the Kremlin is rubbing his hands.
Recent German politics has played a big part in the muddled situation that the country is currently in. Their culpability should not be underestimated. Unfortunately, the mistakes of the past cannot be corrected quickly. It's going to be a cold winter.
This commentary was originally published in German.
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