How Do You Punish Russia When It Wants to Be Punished?

Russia’s attack at Leipzig airport and its hybrid-war operations across Europe are not designed merely to frighten Europeans into abandoning support for Ukraine, the article argues. Their deeper purpose is to bury any illusion that Russia can be persuaded to pursue peace and restore the relationship that existed before the war.

Germany, it says, has now genuinely become angry. Since 2014, Vladimir Putin could kill Ukrainians while German politicians balanced between statements expressing moderate and deep concern. Russia could cross one supposed red line after another, while Germany gradually accepted the idea that German tanks marked with Ukrainian symbols might again appear in places they had not been seen since 1943.

But the recognition that Russia is a real enemy, one Germany must already defend itself against, has struggled to take root. The article presents that difficulty as a clash with a German worldview shaped by pacifist doctrines imposed by the victors of World War II.

Those doctrines were intended to prevent any repetition of the catastrophes of 1914 and 1939. In the article’s framing, they also made it difficult for Germany to understand Russia as an immediate threat rather than a problem that could be managed through concern, restraint and the hope of restored relations.