Awakenings don’t come any ruder than the one Russian president Vladimir Putin, by invading Ukraine, delivered this week to Berlin.
Until Thursday morning German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock insisted that Berlin’s dual path – of diplomacy backed by sanction threats – was the correct one with Russia. By Thursday evening her palpable outrage – at growing civilian casualties and a flagrant breach of the international order – culminated in an expression of how, until the end, Moscow had duped her.
“We have to say we were lied to,” she said in a television interview, her voice trembling. “They stone-cold lied to us.”
Official German shock, surprise and, now, regret over its political approach with Moscow have all sparked anger in neighbouring Poland and its Baltic neighbours.
In Warsaw a bit of gallows humour doing the rounds on Friday about Berlin’s take on Russia drew on the wisdom of cartoon character Homer Simpson: “It takes two to lie: one to lie and one to listen.”
“Berlin listened to Russian lies and believed ... either due to a lack of imagination or because of pure self-interest on a massive scale,” said Eugeniusz Smolar of Warsaw’s Centre for International Relations.
Smolar was jailed in 1968 for protesting against the Soviet invasion of neighbouring Czechoslovakia and later was involved in the Solidarity opposition movement.
On Friday, after three decades of pro-EU engagement in Poland, as a journalist and analyst, his shattered illusions are not towards Moscow – but Berlin.
“Germany has lost a lot of goodwill in this region, first for its Russia approach but even more now after refusing to back a Russian ban from Swift.”
At late-night talks in Brussels on Thursday, Berlin insisted on holding in reserve a Russian ban from the international payments network. On Friday Ms Baerbock explained that a ban could have unintended consequences, “hitting a granddaughter who wants to transfer money to her grandmother, while those responsible for the bloodshed have their own way to move their finances around”.
Business interests
That has not impressed all of Germany’s neighbours, many of whom see another move by Berlin to protect its business interests in Russia.
As well as importing 55 per cent of its natural gas from Russia, Germany is one of Russia’s most significant trade partners. Direct investment amounted to about €25 billion last year, from over 3,600 companies including Mercedes-Benz, BASF and Volkswagen employing almost 280,000 people.
As tensions grew some companies scaled back: building materials giant Knauf, which has annual revenues of about €12.5 billion, has closed its Donbas factory in eastern Ukraine. But others have scaled up.
Engineering giant Siemens, which earns about 1 per cent of its revenue in Russia, is developing high-speed trains there, while a part-owned energy subsidiary is building power plants and equipment for 57 wind farms in Russia. The company shrugged off as “very regrettable” revelations that Siemens-made gas turbines found their way to Russian-occupied Crimea.
From Tallinn to Warsaw, politicians who spent years warning that Georgia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014 were part of a bigger Putin plan, are now saying “We told you so”.
Central to this western blindness, they argue, was Berlin’s block on Ukraine’s Nato and EU membership. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s long-time foreign policy adviser Christoph Heusgen defended the double refusal last year, saying Berlin “did not want to promote conflict” with Moscow.
He told Der Spiegel magazine last September: “She always kept in mind what was tolerable for Russia.”
Western illusions
On Friday among Warsaw officials the frustration was palpable over Berlin’s refusal to back the toughest sanctions, including the Swift ban. Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki argued that the Ukraine conflict had shattered Western illusions about the post-1989 “end of history”.
“Today, however, history is returning with all the force it can muster,” he said.
While EU leaders argue over the timing and scale of sanctions, senior Polish officials said on Friday that “everyone escaping the war will be received in Poland”.
Michal Dworczyk, a top aide to Mr Morawiecki said: “Everyone seeking help in Poland will be able to receive it ... this includes people without passports.”
Despite border queues of up to six kilometres, Poland’s interior ministry said that only a small percentage of those crossing the border were arriving in reception centres set up by the government along the 540km Polish-Ukrainian border.
At midnight on Saturday Poland was set to close its air space to Russian aircraft and block all Russian television stations from its airwaves.
Polish president Andrzej Duda delivered a stern warning to his European neighbours.
“I agree entirely with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy: if you don’t help us today, then tomorrow war will knock on your door. Russia only understands the language of force: it was this way with Tsarist Russia, Communist Russia and, now, in Putin’s Russia.”