>Nordstream was privately funded, half by Gazprom, half by a consortium of privately owned large utilities

And do you also believe what Merkel said that "it's purely a commercial venture"?

Who chairs those "privately owned large utilities"?

What are the links between those people and "the establishment" that includes people like Merkel (earlier Shroeder - his work for Gazprom was also purely commercial venture of a private citizen, right?).

That establishment deciding its a great opportunity for Germany to be the Russian gas station of rest of Europe forced to use that gas as the only "green transition" hydrocarbon.

And not only was it a great commercial venture (that had in its profitability calculation getting rid of nuclear - including blocking countries like Poland from building it, squeezing out other countries that own pipelines again such as Poland/Ukraine/Hungary and so on and forced "transition" to gas for the EU - let's not kid ourselves, renewables will never be more than 50% of base load unless battery tech gets cheaper, so that "transition fuel" would last for 50+ years.

It also contained a humanitarian element of giving Putin huge amount of money therefore making sure the dictator will absolutely not use it to build armies to invade his neighbours (despite doing that already at the time in Georgia for example), but he will get used to that money so much he will spend it all and will not want to stop it coming therefore granting eternal peace in Europe.

Anyone who thought the public will swallow this must have been high... But the Germans did.

"nothing to see here" - right?

I for one am glad hopefully the German public realises what kind of state Russia is now, and what "doing business" with them leads to (it corrupts your own country) , but how long that knowledge remains, and why it took a full scale war in Europe to acquire it I don't know.