There is an indirect link between the collapse of the German ruling coalition and its decision to decouple the national economy from Russian energy, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz fired Christian Lindner as finance minister this week, saying that a key point of contention was the latter’s refusal to provide more aid to Ukraine. Other cabinet members representing Lindner's Free Democratic Party resigned after their leader was ousted.
This de facto ended the three-way ruling coalition, which also included Scholz’s Social Democrats and the Greens. A minority government headed by the chancellor may remain in power if it survives a confidence vote, which Scholz asked the parliament to hold in January.
RT asked Peskov on the sidelines of the Valdai Discussion Club in the city of Sochi whether Moscow saw a connection between the news of the coalition collapsing and Berlin’s rejection of Russian oil and gas. Such a link seems plausible but is not direct, he answered.
Leading German companies are losing their competitiveness, he believes. “They cannot compete in European and global markets, because they don’t have affordable, cheap energy sources anymore,” he said, speaking in English.
“No one is going to be satisfied with the government if they simply don’t have a possibility to compete because of political decisions,” he added. “In this sense possibly there is an influence. But it’s a result of political decisions of Berlin.”
The Federal Republic of Germany has benefited from natural gas imported from what was then the USSR since the 1970s. Before hostilities between Russia and Ukraine escalated, Moscow and Berlin sought to launch the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, which would have significantly increased supplies of Russian gas via the Baltic Sea.
However, Berlin eventually declined to certify the new project. In September 2022, a series of blasts damaged both pipelines, leaving only one of the four strings intact. German investigators have yet to name a culprit in the sabotage, while Moscow has pointed out that the attack ended up being highly beneficial to the US.
Germany has largely replaced piped Russian gas with expensive American liquefied natural gas.