The facts described in the letter are scandalous. “Here in Ukraine, where we suffer daily from rocket and drone attacks on our cities, the price for the mistakes of the past is being paid in the form of lost lives and unprecedented destruction,” warns Svitlana Romanko, executive director of Razom We Stand, in the press release accompanying the open letter. In fact, the EU, led by Germany, has relied on cheap Russian natural gas for decades. After Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022, a rapid phase-out and an end to this energy dependence were announced. While gas imports were significantly reduced at the time, there was a sharp increase in liquefied natural gas (LNG) in 2024. The role of the German state-owned company SEFE is particularly striking in this context. It was once a subsidiary of Russia’s Gazprom, but was nationalized by the German government after the invasion of Ukraine. One wonders why. The state-owned company’s Russian LNG deliveries have skyrocketed from 8 shipments in 2023 to 49 shipments in 2024. And SEFE is also set to purchase record quantities of Russian LNG in 2025. A German state-owned company is now contributing to Putin’s rapidly growing revenues from the LNG business, which now exceed the amount of humanitarian aid that Ukraine receives from the EU.

The authors of the open letter are right to call for an end to this at least indirect support for Russia’s war of aggression.

Nevertheless, the letter remains half-hearted, not only in its meek tone. Rather, it also lacks ecological and internationalist consistency in terms of content. Since its attempted departure from Russian gas, Germany has been relying on an oversized LNG infrastructure. This is ecologically disastrous, as liquefied gas is particularly greenhouse gas-intensive and the high investment costs send a clear signal that the country will continue to rely on fossil fuels for decades to come. The entire LNG project was also a disaster from a (geo)political perspective from the outset. This is because, apart from Russia, it is primarily the US and the Gulf states that export liquefied gas and now want to expand this business model. In its quest for less energy dependence, the EU now faces the choice of buying from Putin, Trump, or the sheikhs and emirs in the Gulf.

This madness could be surpassed by a scenario also mentioned in the open letter. Plans have recently emerged that US billionaire Stephen Lynch wants to buy up the partially intact Nord Stream 2 pipes to breathe new life into the mega-pipeline project. The first CDU politicians are said to be already toying with this idea, and a quote has been circulating that the project could be envisaged under US control in the future. How convenient – then the fossil fuel warmongers would be openly working together.

The only way to put an end to this madness is a consistent phase-out of the fossil fuel economy, which will inevitably mean a reduction in energy consumption. Here, a consistently ecological and internationalist perspective almost inevitably meets a socialist one. In order to make a policy of energy reduction acceptable to the majority, draconian cuts in bourgeois property rights would be necessary. Only then would it be possible to plan for egalitarian prosperity that does not lower the standard of living of working people, but instead comes at the expense of the capitalist profit machine. A first step toward such an eco-socialist orientation would be an immediate halt to all LNG imports—and the definitive end of Nord Stream.

Christian Hofmann is a member of the editorial team of Emanzipation and is primarily interested in Marx’s critique of economics and socio-ecological issues. He is co-author of “Goodbye Capital” and co-editor of “PLANWIRTSCHAFT: Staatssozialismus, Arbeitszeitrechnung, Ökologie” (PLAN ECONOMY: State Socialism, Working Time Accounting, Ecology).