> Things were fine in Germany under the moderate Merkel government
Disagree completely.
I would put significant part of the blame for the whole Ukraine disaster on western reaction in 2014, when Crimea was annexed (thats not to say that Putin isnt an imperialistic asshole, just that this could have been avoided regardless).
The "Merkel policy" (link EU/Russia by trade to prevent war) is a solid long-term plan, but the EU needed to demonstrate willingness to reduce that trade (even when it hurt themselves) to punish expansionism/destabilizing behavior.
It failed to do this almost completely. This made it clear to anyone that a (successful) annexation of the whole Ukraine would have gone (mostly) unpunished.
In this case, I blame the Merkel government for putting the financial well-being of its citizens over ethical principles, but a big part of the problem is that most voters are too stupid and uninformed to even realize that such a tradeoff is being made anyway, and react to economical signals only.
> In this case, I blame the Merkel government for putting the financial well-being of its citizens over ethical principles,
Its much worse than that in terms of realpolitik: the gains were short-term, the costs will be paid for over decades, and disproportionately allocated to germanys eastern neighbors like the Poles and Estonians who are at increased risk of Russian aggression.
It really was such a bad tradeoff and I don't think this is hindsight: Russia is basically doing what is has been doing for centuries.
Complete failure of the German political system between 1990-2020+
Ukraine itself traded with Russia from 2024-2025 and collected transit fees for Russian gas.
Nuland and others were active in Ukraine before and during the Maidan revolution.
But please, continue to blame Germany, blow up its pipelines, send 1,000,000 refugees who collect social security (the topic of this subthread, do the slash-social-security hawks here want to evict the Ukrainians and send them to the front lines)?