The History of Europe's Energy Dependence on Russia
August 5, 2026 · Frisian News
By 2021, Russia supplied 40 percent of Europe's natural gas. Germany built this dependence over decades, assuming trade prevents war.
By 2021, Russia supplied 40 percent of Europe's natural gas, and Germany took more than one third of it. This was not an accident. Over five decades, German politicians and industrialists built a system of dependency on the assumption that trade breeds peace, or at least prevents war.
The first Soviet pipeline to Western Europe opened in 1968, but West Germany's real pivot came after 1970, when Willy Brandt's government signed a long-term gas deal with Moscow. Brandt called this Ostpolitik: opening to the East. German business loved it. Lower energy costs meant higher profits. The Cold War was real, but business came first.
By the 1990s and 2000s, after the Soviet collapse, Europe doubled down. German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder championed two pipelines under the Baltic, Nord Stream 1 and 2, to bypass Poland and Ukraine and strengthen direct ties to Russia. Warnings from Poland and the Baltic states were dismissed as paranoia. The logic was simple: Russia needs the money, Europe needs the gas, mutual interest ensures stability.
This assumed Russia would always need European trade more than Europe needed Russian gas, a calculation that ignored Russia's ability to live on less and its willingness to weaponize energy when political pressure mounted. By 2022, when Russia cut gas supplies to Europe over Ukraine sanctions, the continent scrambled. Germany, France, and others had built no cushion. The gamble had failed.
The lesson is not that energy trade is wrong. It is that betting your security on the goodwill of an adversary, while dismissing contrary voices, is a luxury only the powerful can afford. And they still paid the price.
Published August 5, 2026 · Frisian News