From their perspective, Germany acted with remarkable restraint

Given the gravity of what has happened, these are extremely weak responses, and they are not sufficient to reverse the situation

What I find interesting to understand from a decision-making perspective on the opposing side is to what extent this tepid response is actually the result of a certain fear of escalation already being built into the political decision-making process, the key word here being nuclear weapons

And that is actually very realistic because fear of escalation has shaped the German government's approach for many years in every respect, when it comes to Ukraine, to the wider war, and so on, and that dynamic played out here once again

The Russian foreign minister agrees.

When it comes to Germany, it's best to stick to the tried and tested strategy of carrot and stick.

For now, we're showing the stick, not yet using it, with all the measures you've just outlined

The foreign minister on the red team is anything but pleased with that development.

We need to undermine this German objective.

Our goal now is to prevent the EU from agreeing on activating the solidarity clause, Article 42.

Now we need to activate Hungary.

Hungary, Slovakia, perhaps also the Czech Republic, and then there will be a number of other countries that will want to avoid further tensions: Spain, perhaps Portugal, Ireland, neutral countries like Austria.

That's where the red team is planning the next phase of its strategy, to render Germany incapable of acting.

"When it comes to Germany, it's best to stick to the tried-and-tested strategy of carrot and stick.

The carrot is mainly economic, including the resumption of cheap energy supplies."

In other words, Russia is looking for internal divisions it can exploit.

"We can exploit a whole range of vulnerabilities in Germany to achieve our strategic objectives.

At the top of the list is the desire to resume economic cooperation and energy imports.

There is strong lobbying for this, particularly in parts of Eastern Germany's business community, and to some extent within the government.

This is where we can drive a wedge."

This is how the Russian foreign minister describes it.

It's often been the same in the past.

Germany never expected what we were capable of doing offensively.

They were always caught off guard, and to this day, they haven't learned anything.

I mean, NATO is now effectively on the brink of a major war, and the German response is petty, half-hearted.

It's unbelievable.

The key question is, how quickly can this actually happen? I believe it would probably take

two or three days to carry out this entire operation.