Final Word from Wednesday, January 29, 2025

On Mon., German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in Handelsblatt that his country has "long since stopped importing liquefied natural gas from Russia" and now gets it mainly from the U.S. On Tues., the Financial Times reported that Germany is still buying significant amounts of Russian LNG. Like Czech politicians who found themselves in a similar situation, Scholz is either ignorant of what is going on with Russian gas or was simply lying, neither of which is very becoming a national leader. Even more important, though, is where this is headed. Scholz told Handelsblatt that it would be good if Russian LNG imports into Europe continued to decline. Czech Foreign Min. Jan Lipavský told Czech TV on Jan. 20 that "we need Europe to finally make some sort of move to limit the Russian gas flowing into Europe." The Czech Republic is ready for this, he said. Is it? It almost seems that people like Scholz and Lipavský want their countries to go cold turkey while they're still addicted to Russian gas. [ Czech Republic Television United States Inauguration Day Donald Trump ]