Russian gas embargo will cost Germany almost $190 billion, says Bundesbank

Bundesbank on Friday (April 22) warned that the European Union’s ban on Russian gas imports will cost Germany almost $1.95 billion.

Germany’s most powerful bank said that the Russian gas embargo will plummet the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 5 per cent.

This will lead to a rise in energy prices, increase inflation and trigger one of the deepest recessions in decades.

Bundesbank said that it is not possible for industrial consumers to replace Russian gas with an alternative for three-quarters of the year.

Christian Lindner, Germany’s finance minister, has said that the country is moving ”as fast as possible.”

”We are willing to stop all energy imports from Russia, it’s just a matter of time,” he said.

”In the end, we don’t want to have any further business with Putin,” he told BBC.

”We have to be patient,” he added after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky criticised Germany’s energy payments to Russia by calling them ”blood money.”

Germany’s Social Democratic Party slammed Chancellor Olaf Scholz for being too lenient with Russia.

It accused him of dragging his feet on deliveries of heavy weapons to Ukraine and asked to take tougher action against Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In response, Scholz said in an interview with German weekly Spiegel, “distorted and slanderous depiction” annoys him adding that the potential to send arms to Ukraine from the stocks of the Bundeswehr had been “largely exhausted.”

According to him, the centre-left Social Democrats were “bound into the Western and transatlantic alliance”.

“What is still available will absolutely still be delivered.” He was referring to artillery munitions and anti-tank weapons.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said, “There are no taboos for us with regard to armoured vehicles and other weaponry that Ukraine needs.”