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What sanctions? Russian gas was basically the only thing the EU wouldn't touch. Gazprom was the one that pulled the plug. The closest we got was refusing to insure oil tankers if Russia sells over $40/bbl, and that was months after Russia cut off European gas.
There is an actual death toll and very real crimes have been committed. Your ‘comparing and contrasting’ needs a bit more thought if you think the consequences equal.
Germany's gas storage were half-empty in 2021 and prices in Europe were high. Russia had brought a large share of those gas storage facilities under its control. Gas deliveries were lower than usual. In the winter Putin than started the war against the Ukraine. Putin had prepared for the situation - sanctions against Putin were supposed to create energy shortages and fear among European citizens, give how much Europe's energy supply (gas, oil, and not to forget nuclear) depended on Russia. Sanctions were supposed to damage Europes economies, too. And they did, prices went up.
The war was supposed to last only a few days and then Russia would control the Ukraine - Putin would have the Ukraine, the Pipelines, the energy. But that was not what happened.
Putin miscalculated the situation and the reaction. Instead, the Ukraine government survived the first Russian attack, the war is now more than a year old, several stages of sanctions were brought into place, Europe&US delivers support for the Ukraine, Russia's energy industry is now largely decoupled from Europe, Russia is a political paria, and there were hundreds of thousands war victims and millions of refuges, due to Russias war on the Ukraine. Russia has yet failed to react to the political & military pressure against it with any signs of willing to end the war.
The falling number of people who actually notice or pay attention to that tone is just as tragic.
https://www.iea.org/reports/russian-supplies-to-global-energ...
All round it’s an absolutely incredible waste.
Second, a further ‘important technicality’ is that even if the West (quite correctly) blew up Nord Stream II, it wasn’t in use, so its destruction didn’t disturb energy flows.
Third, Western interventions would also be described as ‘wreaking havoc’, so this isn’t the gotcha proving Western hypocrisy you think it is. And even if it were, the answer is to consistently oppose, not acquiesce, to imperialist aggression; many people are capable of opposing more than one thing.
Gerhard Schröder, former German chancellor, was a big advocate for the Nord Stream pipeline and then was appointed in the board of Gazprom, the sole (Russian) shareholder of the aforementioned stream.
Germany paid the highest price when Russian gas was cut off and the government, led by a coalition that includes the Green party (die Grüne), had to open new coal mines.
Something was obviously wrong in our (the EU) energy policies.
In Washington's fever dream, where it is "right" that Germany should instead buy expensive energy that is shipped across the Atlantic and lose its industrial advantage as as result.
It is totally, comically absurd. Untethered from reality.
An experienced politician should know better.
Like every other (sovereign) state.
Self-interest also implies that it works for Russia. It very clearly hasn’t, and could undo the regime.
The level of violence and aggression is like some mid/late 20th century empire building BS.
It's the US that took out international law and beat it to death in sight of the entire world.
define "works".
there's a big divide in the World on this war, it could be considered a victory for Putin, he made friends fight over it, turned allies into adversaries and made enemies even more suspicious of each other. We are at a peak high level of conflict, like we haven't seen in decades.
For example...
edit: I'm not claiming Washington is better than Germany, I'm from Italy, we are still paying the price for both.
My claim is that EU policies were wrong because each country was playing its own game.
It's hard enough to maintain a federation of neighbor states. It's impossible to do that while also catering to the whims of a distant superpower.
Let's put it this way: there were (are) plans on every desk of every Prime Minister or President in Europe that say "we could let Putin take Ukraine and avoid a conflict that could harm us all".
> It seems that many thoughtful EU statesmen, like Schröder, believe that
I believe one doesn't maintain the spirit of the Budapest memorandum by entering the board of directors of the largest Russian gas supplier and becoming director of the board of Rosneft, largest Russian oil producer, years after Russia invaded Crimea. Don't you think?
But I concede Schroeder that he might have truly believed that he could keep Russia from invading Ukraine. Nonetheless mixing politics and business was a bad mistake on his part.