Like most people outside of the Kremlin, mainstream German politicians are outraged about the poisoning of Alexey Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who’s being treated in a Berlin clinic and has just come out of a coma. Then again, they’ve been outraged countless times about whatever Russia under President Vladimir Putin has got up to. And their indignation has never amounted to much. This time something is different.
Just ask Norbert Roettgen, the chairman of the Bundestag’s foreign-policy committee and one of three candidates to become the next leader of the center-right Christian Democrats, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party. He thinks Germany and Europe must talk to Putin in a language the Russian leader understands: gas. Specifically, Roettgen wants to halt construction of a pipeline that runs under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany and is already 94% built. A growing chorus of German voices agrees with him.
