Berlin- I have a new vlog out today on my Fabled City channel that touches on a bit of the Cold War history of this storied, complicated capital and its current geopolitical predicament as embattled Ukraine’s principal EU lifeline. As Ukraine fights tooth-and-nail to defend itself from a neo imperial Russia, it has developed a deep reliance on external military hardware and ammunition supplied by Germany and the United States et al.
This has had the effect of causing domestic political tension within the polities of donor societies as the hot war in eastern Europe has no clear endgame nor timeline. The Kremlin is waging a relentless war of attrition hoping to grind Kyiv into submission while the Ukrainians keep leveling up their asymmetric warfare tactics against their much larger, less nimble adversary. Whether it wants to be or not, Berlin has become a quiet front in something akin to a new Cold War as the Putin regime works to undermine western unity over supporting Ukraine militarily and target specific backer states with information operations coupled in the case of Germany with physical acts of espionage.