It was an incredibly short-sighted idea. ...with many people blatantly pointing out dangers of it.
Russia now has a "war chest" of almost a trillion USD. Enough to pay off all of its debt and to run the country under complete sanctions for two full years.
This is 100% because the EU, led by Germany, decided to allow natural gas to be pumped in.
That's not how sanctions, or realpolitik/geopolitics work, yet of course you are right. Western politics is reduced to ~2 year cycles. At best there are overarching themes that continue for a decade, then the next crisis somehow erases everything, and some new thing captures the imagination, that we of course fail to carry on to fruition.
Despite cheap money (pension funds are chock full of cash due to aging retiring population and they buy government bonds) and slack in the economy (youth unemployment) every "developed" country is full of idiots (ahem, pensioners and soon to be pensioners) clutching pearls about how spending will ruin everything. Sure, they want to play it safe, but this has an enormous cost on the current and future generations.
Russia now has a "war chest" of almost a trillion USD. Enough to pay off all of its debt and to run the country under complete sanctions for two full years.
This is 100% because the EU, led by Germany, decided to allow natural gas to be pumped in.