This is The Guardian.

The Guardian Archive Long Read.

Hi, my name's Patrick Winter, and I'm the author of article entitled We Were All Wrong,

how Germany got hooked on Russian Energy and it was published in 2022.

Well, slightly oddly, I studied history at university and I largely forgot about history for a long time after university because I was covering politics, which was very immediate and nowish.

And then when I moved to write about international relations, I slowly discovered how useful it had been to study history, both because it helps you to think about

why other people think the way they do, and there's always a reason for it.

And the second was just to understand how much of what you are reporting on now is born of

events 10, 20 years, 30 years previously. And in this case, I was writing about the sort of buildup and start

of the Ukraine war and how Russia had invaded. And one of the things that became incredibly

clear very early on was the degree to which Germany was in a contradictory position of being very supportive of Ukraine

and Zelensky in its sovereignty, and at the same time it was pouring money into the Russian

coffers and so arming and funding the arming of the Russian army that was causing so much

damage in Ukraine.

And I just started to think about why this contradiction existed,

why it was so difficult for Germany to extricate itself from that.

And the reasons weren't purely economic.

They were also ideological.

A lot of the article was really looking at the early battles

going on inside the German coalition government

about trying to wean itself off Russian energy. And to a large degree, it has, but not completely

by any means, and there's still huge loopholes in the way the sanctions operate. But a lot of

...