On the guessing game – Der Spiegel:

‘On Monday, in a theatrical production in front of cameras, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov advised his president to continue negotiations. Then, on Tuesday, the announcement came of a partial withdrawal of some of the up to 150,000 Russian soldiers deployed at or near the Ukrainian border, along with some heavy equipment. There suddenly seemed to be room for diplomacy – and Scholz appeared to be in the right place at the right time.
But on Thursday, the mood tipped again when Moscow delivered its official response to the answers provided by the U.S. for the security guarantees that had been requested by Russia. And it wasn’t particularly vague. Moscow accused the Americans of ignoring Russia’s core concerns. The response said that Russia would "implement measures of a military-technical nature," but that no "Russian invasion" of Ukraine is planned.

It also reiterated the Russian demand that the U.S. withdraw all troops from NATO member states in Eastern Europe and cease all arms deliveries to Ukraine. And demanded a guarantee that NATO will not expand further to the east. Russia made clear that it would only accept full compliance with its demands as a basis for negotiations – demands that cannot be fulfilled from the Western point of view, as Putin well knows.
It soon became apparent that the troops Russia had pledged to withdraw had not, in fact, been withdrawn, but merely moved. The unanimous consensus of analysis from Western intelligence agencies is that Russia is exchanging troop units, but that the overall military presence is growing. The U.S. is claiming that an additional 7,000 troops have been deployed to the Ukrainian border in recent days. Biden even warned there was a "very high" risk that Putin will attack in the coming days.’

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‘The forecast for the coming days is gloomy. According to the situation report, Russia "continues to maintain a military threat posture." A posture that was reinforced, the report noted, by the exercises in Belarus and a planned naval maneuver in the Black Sea.
Currently, the assessment states, "all military conditions remain in place for Russia to engage in military activities against Ukraine at any time and with almost no warning." The only thing missing, it says, is the "order from the political leadership."
The Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, reported similar information to German parliamentarians on Wednesday. BND Vice President Wolfgang Wien, a general in the German military, presented his agency’s assessment in a closed-door session of the Defense Committee. Even if the BND didn’t have much new to add, committee members listened intently as Wien shared with them numerous details about the mobilized Russian troops and their weapons systems.’

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‘Despite his uneasiness in that exchange, though, it became clear in Riga that Steinmeier quite enjoyed his role as Germany’s alternate foreign minister. He has plenty of diplomatic experience, having spent eight years as head of Germany’s Foreign Ministry in a previous Merkel government, and is comfortable name-dropping big foreign policy concepts and historic buzzwords – Yalta, Helsinki – with the satisfaction of someone who knows what he is talking about.

At the Yalta Conference in 1945, he intoned, Europe was divided into spheres of influence, arguing that this is now what Putin wants to do as well. At the Helsinki Conference, he went on, which ran from 1973 to 1975, countries agreed on a concept for shared security in Europe. Helsinki enshrined the national right to self-determination: Each country should be allowed to choose its own alliance partners – the counter-model to Putin’s neo-colonial push for zones of influence. In the latter scenario, every country near Russia would automatically be under Moscow’s thumb, Steinmeier noted. If Putin were allowed such influence, the sovereignty of countries like Poland, Estonia and Slovakia would also be harmed, the German president said.
On Sunday, following his re-election as German president, Steinmeier – sounding almost as though he actually were still the German foreign minister, or even chancellor – took Putin to task. In blunt language, he said that Russia was responsible for the crisis and announced there would a firm response. He said that anyone who attacks democracy "will have me as an opponent."’

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‘The decisive question for approval is whether Nord Stream 2 represents a danger to a reliable supply of natural gas to Germany, due to the significant reliance on a single supplier country. The German Economy Ministry had always insisted that the pipeline did not represent a danger, on the strength of which the Federal Network Agency would likely have granted approval. But Economy Minister Robert Habeck is now tending towards the opposite position, pointing to the Ukraine crisis and the empty gas reserves. This would kill the project and exempt the government from paying compensation to the pipeline’s primary investor, Gazprom. The scenario is currently being discussed between the Chancellery and the Economy Ministry.
It is likely for this reason that Scholz is more aggressively wielding the pipeline – the name of which he avoids saying in public – as a potential bargaining chip. At the press conference in the Kremlin, the chancellor said that everyone knows what is going on with Nord Stream 2. It is no secret at this point that the project would be dead from Germany’s point of view if Russia were to invade Ukraine.
There are many voices currently suggesting that Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) are embracing a more realist approach to dealing with Moscow, after decades of emphasizing détente with the country. "Russia has seen how determined Germany, France and the other Western countries have been pushing for a peaceful solution to the conflict. And how coordinated and united we are acting," says SPD party chair Lars Klingbeil. "The announcements from the Kremlin on de-escalation must now be followed by verifiable actions, so that there is nothing impeding serious negotiations. We are not letting up on attempts to find a diplomatic way out. But we are also very closely observing the situation: Should it come to further escalations, Russia will face tough sanctions."
Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht, also of the SPD, sees the tense situation as a wake-up call for Germans’ views on their country’s long-term global political role. Lambrecht told DER SPIEGEL: "The threatening situation at the border of Ukraine has once again made it clear to us how important it has unfortunately once again become to have a significant deterrent. We also need to draw conclusions from this when it comes to the financing of the German military."’

Read the article, by Melanie Amann, Matthias Gebauer, Dirk Kurbjuweit, Ann-Katrin Müller, Mathieu von Rohr, Britta Sandberg, Fidelius Schmid, Christoph Schult, Gerald Traufetter and Veit Medick, here.

It remains to be seen whether Putin revived the NATO by threatening to invade Ukraine, much depends on the outcome. War, no war? If in two or three months from now the NATO is seen as impotent and clueless because Russian troops are in Kiev the ‘revival’ was short-lived and rather symbolic.

And if Russia invades Ukraine Germany cannot continue with Nordstream 2, for the time being at least, there is always a new normal, where what once seemed to be impossible becomes possible.