I'm German, I followed those developments closely at the time. Russia refused to deliver gas! The blowing up of the pipes happened quite some time after that!
That shows that Russia prepared for using gas as an economic weapon against Germany especially well before they even started the war.
From the Zeit article:
German
> "Die Gasflüsse über die deutschen Grenzen sind unüblich niedrig für diese Jahreszeit - mit Ausnahme von Nord Stream 1, die sind konstant hoch", sagt Fabian Huneke. Es sei verwunderlich, dass vor dem Hintergrund der hohen Preise und der hohen Nachfrage die Gaslieferkapazitäten Richtung Europa so wenig genutzt würden. "Wenn Gazprom sich marktrational verhalten würde, würden sie die Gaslieferungen nach Europa auch durch die Pipelines, die durch Belarus und die Ukraine führen, verstärken." Den Grund für dieses Verhalten sieht der Energiemarktexperte in der Ukraine-Krise.
English, translated by Google
> "The gas flows across the German borders are unusually low for this time of year - with the exception of Nord Stream 1, which are consistently high," says Fabian Huneke. It is surprising that, given the high prices and high demand, the gas delivery capacities to Europe are so little used. "If Gazprom behaved in a market-rational manner, they would also increase gas supplies to Europe through the pipelines that run through Belarus and Ukraine." The energy market expert sees the reason for this behavior in the Ukraine crisis.
The transport of the turbine was accompanied by sanctions and each party didn’t wanted to get punished, awaiting exemption documents for delivery. As the article already states in the headline and further acknowledges in the content Russia was not refusing to get their turbine back but waiting for documents themselves which the article beautifully conceals with the little word ‘apparently’.
The unusual low gas storage reserves at the beginning of the year 2022 in Germany with 45% compared to usual 75% while Nordstream 1 is delivering at full capacity could be related to the sanctions which lead Poland to stop transit through the Jamal pipeline and other transit routes through Ukraine and possibly gas market trade activities. Having just the ‘economic weapon’ argument is lacking, especially in regard that Russian gas is still to today reaching Germany and it is in the interest of Russia to deliver.
Tangentially... how did the German name of the city/region get into _that_ form? Is it a loan from English?? Germany and Russia have been closely entwined for centuries.
Wikipedia has a comment which appears to make no sense:
> The [old] form Moskovĭ has left traces in other languages, including English: Moscow; German: Moskau; French: Moscou; Portuguese: Moscou, Moscovo; and Spanish: Moscú.
But all of the older forms include a /v/. How did that drop out of every language except Portuguese?
(There is an English term Muscovy for the region, but wiktionary suggests that it derives from the formal name given to the region in international Latin rather than deriving from Russian. In that case, a /w/ would also generate a letter V, so there's no explanatory power.)
U, v and w are all derived from the same letter v, for which no distinction existed in latin (same for i, j and y).
Apparently, when different languages started to make the distinction, they picked a different letter combination: ov, ou, ow, au, ú, etc. probably depending on the local way of pronouncing the word.
Same for latin ivvenis, modernized to juvenis, which gave young, jeune, jung, joven, etc.
The letters "U", "V", and "W" are all derived from the same letter, the Latin "V". The sounds /u/, /v/, and /w/ are different.
We're talking about a period many centuries after Latin phonology might have been relevant. The word doesn't come from Latin. Old English has no confusion between [v] and [w] to begin with; [w] is part of the phoneme /w/ and [v] is part of the phoneme /f/. In Middle English there's a distinction between /f/ and /v/, where we see French-derived words like village and vine distinguished from English-derived words like fill and fire, and from French-derived words like fine.
So what happened?
> Same for latin ivvenis, modernized to juvenis, which gave young, jeune, jung, joven, etc.
Please don't just invent things that sound good to you. Young and (German, I assume) jung don't come from Latin either.
> U, v and w are all derived from the same letter v, for which no distinction existed in latin (same for i, j and y).
Again, please don't just make up random non-facts. Latin has no letter J. It does recognize Y, as the Greek letter upsilon, which it distinguishes from all Latin vowels. The fact that Romance languages name "Y" the "Greek I" should have been a hint of this. You can hardly read any Latin that mentions Greeks without running into it; compare Pyramus, Thucydides.
"Moskau blockiert offenbar Weitertransport von Nord-Stream-1-Turbine" ("Moscow apparently blocks further transport of Nord Stream 1 turbine") -- https://www.rnd.de/politik/russland-blockiert-offenbar-weite...
I'm German, I followed those developments closely at the time. Russia refused to deliver gas! The blowing up of the pipes happened quite some time after that!
You also don't mention that German Gasprom, which controlled German gas reserves, emptied them just before the war! -- https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/gas-speicher-in-deuts... (German, paywall), -- https://www.zeit.de/news/2022-01/21/ungewoehnlich-leere-gass...
That shows that Russia prepared for using gas as an economic weapon against Germany especially well before they even started the war.
From the Zeit article:
German
> "Die Gasflüsse über die deutschen Grenzen sind unüblich niedrig für diese Jahreszeit - mit Ausnahme von Nord Stream 1, die sind konstant hoch", sagt Fabian Huneke. Es sei verwunderlich, dass vor dem Hintergrund der hohen Preise und der hohen Nachfrage die Gaslieferkapazitäten Richtung Europa so wenig genutzt würden. "Wenn Gazprom sich marktrational verhalten würde, würden sie die Gaslieferungen nach Europa auch durch die Pipelines, die durch Belarus und die Ukraine führen, verstärken." Den Grund für dieses Verhalten sieht der Energiemarktexperte in der Ukraine-Krise.
English, translated by Google
> "The gas flows across the German borders are unusually low for this time of year - with the exception of Nord Stream 1, which are consistently high," says Fabian Huneke. It is surprising that, given the high prices and high demand, the gas delivery capacities to Europe are so little used. "If Gazprom behaved in a market-rational manner, they would also increase gas supplies to Europe through the pipelines that run through Belarus and Ukraine." The energy market expert sees the reason for this behavior in the Ukraine crisis.