Putin's German puppet asks who poisoned Navalny

[BeyondGeography]

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A long-ish feature on Schroeder filled with the usual self-justifications, but the reporter slips this little bit in toward the end:

…But to Mr. Putin’s critics, Mr. Schröder is the epitome of a craven class of Western politicians who enable Mr. Putin by financing and legitimizing the Kremlin.

After Mr. Putin’s main domestic rival, Aleksei A. Navalny, was poisoned in 2020 in what the German government, among others, said appeared to be a state-sponsored assassination attempt, Mr. Schröder publicly played down the matter in the German news media.

Asked about it in the interviews, he noted that Mr. Navalny had been convicted in Russia. Last month, Mr. Navalny was sentenced to nine years in a penal colony after being found guilty by a Russian court of large-scale fraud and contempt. I pointed out that he had been poisoned. “Yes, but by whom?” Mr. Schröder replied.

[Igel]

1. Three years ago Europe--esp. Germany--

was advised to stop Nord Stream 2. In fact, it was strongly suggested that they build LNG terminals and wean themselves from sucking on whatever Russian orifice they sucked gas from. Reliance on Russia was a bad, stupid idea.

Instead, they were advised, they could get LNG from the US (the advisor's preferred option, because it meant American First). The two advice-bits were utterly severable--you could build LNG terminals and get natural gas from not-Russia and not-US.

The response, esp. from Germany, was derision.

They seemed to prefer the pipeline; they seemed to prefer helping Russia.

They're still the laggards.

[rockfordfile]

2. sell out pos