The Germans are clearly pissed off
Germany's economy went from being the engine of all European growth, to one of the worst performing ones in a period of just three years. Now even the UK has an economy in better shape than Germany's. How low the mighty have fallen...
There are a multitude of reasons for this. Among them: a botched post-pandemic recovery, falling exports to China, stupid insistence on avoiding increased debt, structural demographic problems, and underinvestment in infrastructure.
But there is also another very important reason, and that is the loss of access to cheap hydrocarbons from Russia. One example is BASF's chemical complex in Ludwigshafen - which is the largest in the world. It employs 40,000 people directly, but also allows millions of others downstream in the supply chain to produce other goods. After losing access to Russian gas, Ludwigshafen is now on a slow road to collapse. Then there are fertilizer producers. Metallurgists. Even those companies that manufacture inputs used in the renewable energy industry - like Siemens - are suffering from hugely increased energy costs.
What Zelensky and Co did is take bread off the table of the German worker, and then showed up the next day asking for handouts. Because the Germans are big blubbering vaginas - they still gave money to these racketeers.
Poland is also obviously involved. 1000%.
Tusk telling people to shut up, and others saying that those divers should get medals - is a big mistake.
The explosion of the pipeline's most direct result has been handing the European energy market over to the United States, from which they have already earned hundreds of billions of dollars (and people had the balls to accuse us of blowing up our own pipeline for three years!!!!).
It did not stop Russia's invasion. It did not curtail the Kremlin's ability to find money for the war. It has not made Russia more willing to negotiate - but rather the opposite. It played no role in motivating Ukraine's allies to donate funds and weapons.
All it did was p!ss off Germany - Ukraine's largest and most generous ally after the United States. Great job Zelensky!