Thus Der Spiegel today. “As Moscow continues to escalate the situation in Ukraine, public and political pressure is turning against German companies who do business with Russia,” explains the newspaper. “The countries’ economic ties make disengagement next to impossible.” As the article shows in some detail, the trade between the two countries goes way beyond oil and gas on the one hand, and luxury cars on the other. There are some six-thousand German companies in Moscow, more than all those from all the other European Union countries combined. In short, economic sanctions against Russia would hurt Germany, too. And how. No prize for guessing the fate of these sanctions. If America sticks to them, that will only tighten the economic ties between Germany and Russia. As for the rest of the Union, who the hell cares, anyway.