"We stand with Ukraine as long as they need us [...] no matter what my German voters think, but I want to deliver to the people of Ukraine."

"We are facing now wintertime, when we will be challenged as democratic politicians. People will go in the street and say 'We cannot pay our energy prices'. And I will say 'Yes I know, so we help you with social measures.' But I don't want to say 'Ok then we stop the sanctions against Russia.' We will stand with Ukraine, and this means the sanctions will stay also in wintertime, even if it gets really tough for politicians."

– (Former) German Foreign Minister, now President of the UN General Assembly

"no matter what my German voters think"

This is how all the EU elites think about the European voters.

I have never understood the argument that Russia somehow has leverage over Europe by providing us with gas. Russia has never once broken or even threatened to break its contracts for political gain. What leverage did Russia have before? Europe was the party that unilaterally chose to terminate the contract and stop receiving Russian gas. The Russians never turned it off even when the Europeans were supplying Ukraine with weapons to kill Russians and commit terrorist attacks inside Russia.

And yes, there are a few leaders in Europe who are more on the pragmatic/opportunistic side, but at the moment the hard-line Russophobes are very dominant. They have gotten their way nearly every time so far. The only exception being the recent rebellion over the theft of Russia's reserves. We will see if the situation becomes desperate enough that more cracks start to show, but so far Europe has shown itself repeatedly to be willing to destroy itself for the sake of its ideological crusade against Russia.