S01E01European Naivety

How European decision-makers fell head over heels into the trap that was set for them. In 2017, Russian emissaries tried to direct the actions of Catalan separatists to encourage them to break with Madrid, going so far as to propose to Carlos Puigdemont that they send troops to Barcelona… At the same time, in northern Germany, for almost a decade, Russia reactivated old networks dating from the Cold War. The aim was to complete the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in order to make Western Europe totally dependent on Russian energy. A former Stasi member, close to Vladimir Putin, thus managed to persuade German politicians to circumvent American sanctions against the pipeline. Once the Europeans had become “addicted” to Russian gas, Vladimir Putin felt he had a free hand to invade Ukraine…