I'm not surprised. The German plan to liberalise Russia via extensive trade and energy integration with them was definitely demonstrated to be the massively wrong theory without evidence it always was.

So now they've realised what they were often told along the way, it's a strategic weakness. I'd be building port capacity like crazy also.

Turns out, you can't introduce democracy to a country just by buying things from them, China is a very obvious exhibit B.

It's the well-deserved public execution of a strain of ludicrous liberal(as in liberal economics, not the Democrats) pie-in-the-sky faith based thinking.

Best summed up by that dumb quip about "no two countries with McDonalds restaurants have ever gone to war".

All hail the (apparently democracy loving) Invisible Hand!

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/15/gas-blackmail-...