Baerbock to keep Russia sanctions even as energy bills rise

Baerbock: Support for Ukraine “regardless of what my voters think”

At the Forum 2000 held in Prague, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock promised that Berlin will maintain support for Ukraine and sanctions against Russia regardless of what her voters think. “If I promise the people of Ukraine that we will support them for as long as it takes, then I want to keep that promise, regardless of what German voters think,” she said. The scene is telling: a minister accountable to German voters guaranteeing a third country something those voters did not vote for. And all this with winter just around the corner.

It is not an offhand remark or a slip after dinner. The speech came with a plan B for the consequences and a fairly clear implicit message: social discontent will not alter German foreign policy.

What exactly Baerbock said at Forum 2000

The core of the message is the word maintain. Baerbock insisted that every measure she adopts “must make clear that this remains in force for as long as Ukraine needs it,” and framed the support as a matter of principle: backing Ukraine is “simply normal if you believe in the rule of law and freedom in the world.” She added that what is at stake is “the right of every country to determine its own future.”

The setting bears underlining. The statement is not made in Berlin, before the Bundestag, but at an international conference in Prague, with Ukrainian and European attendees. The farther from home the promise is announced, the more obvious it becomes whom it is aimed at. And whom it is not.

Sanctions stay even as energy bills rise

The uncomfortable part came when she spoke about winter. “Now we face winter, when we will be challenged as democratic politicians. People will take to the streets and say: ‘We can’t pay energy prices.’ And I will say: ‘Yes, I know, that’s why we’ll help you with social measures,’” she predicted. The next sentence is the one that spread like wildfire: “But I don’t want to say: ‘Fine, then we stop imposing sanctions on Russia.’”

Put another way: the German government offers compensation—social measures and “good solutions across Europe to offset the social consequences”—but no review of sanctions policy. “We will stand with Ukraine, and this means sanctions will remain in force in winter too, even if that becomes very difficult for politicians,” she concluded. In plain bill language: a government makes the decision, the taxpayer foots the bill.

From Merkel to Scholz: the rupture of Germany’s energy axis

Much of the German conversation around these statements looks at the immediate past. Some argue that the shift is not ideological but about alignment: Angela Merkel’s era is remembered for Nord Stream 2, for industrial growth sustained by cheap Russian gas, and for direct dealings with Moscow that the succeeding government is said to have blown up. The comparison recurs: Pilingui was raised in the GDR and speaks German; Merkel, born in the GDR, spoke Russian and went personally to say goodbye to him when she left office.

The counterpoint also circulates. Against the thesis of bilateral understanding, the opposite is argued: that Berlin always acted according to its own interests and that the problem is not the person but dependence on interests alien to the European electorate. In that account, the current chancellor is portrayed as an appendage with no weight of his own: booed at public events, with the charisma of an acorn, according to the most repeated criticism. Everyone looks out for number one.

The streets are already moving: Berlin and Kassel

The scenario Baerbock anticipated is not hypothetical. The far-right AfD held a rally in Berlin that, by its own count, brought together more than 10,000 citizens against the energy crisis. In Kassel, protesters blocked access to a Rheinmetall plant and police responded with batons and tear gas. There were also rallies against sending weapons to Ukraine in several German cities.

The question is how much rope is left. The most optimistic analysis trusts that social aid will defuse the discontent before it turns into a political crisis. The pessimistic scenario does not require much imagination: power cuts, unpayable bills and a long winter are a breeding ground difficult to manage with partial measures.

Can an elected representative who doesn’t deliver be recalled?

Here the institutional argument appears, and it is the most uncomfortable for the official narrative. If an elected official can announce that they will act outside the wishes of those who voted for them, representation loses its correction mechanism. Hence the repeated demand: in a democracy worthy of the name, there should be a way to recall a politician’s mandate when they begin to fail to fulfill the will of their voters.

The alternative raised from skepticism is cruder and, at the same time, more forceful: if no one turned out to vote, the democratic illusion would collapse on its own. It is the old debate about whether the problem lies with politicians or with the electorate that legitimizes them every four years. What is hard to dispute is that German citizens will be able to see the real scope of the promise on their energy bill.

An elected official says in public that they will do the opposite of what their voters want, and the energy bill will still arrive in January. Does anyone believe these words will hold when the cold bites and the polls start to move?

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Key facts in the Baerbock case