The chosen dependency on Russian gas has less to do with the Energiewende than with geopolitics. There has actually been a reduction in Russian gas supplies since the end of the Cold War. Germany is dependent on gas imports from Russia but less so than many other East European countries. Not to say that there aren't worrying signals, though. Russia has delivered far less gas to Germany this year, while depleting the gas stocked in their gas storage facilities in Germany.
No. Russia has steadily been increasing its gas supplies to Germany, it's just that Germany b/c of the Energiewende (a.k.a. "the world's d*st energy policy" [1]) has been increasing its gas demand even more. Germany is gobbling up the largest share of the world's exported gas market (~>10%) [2].
> "Russia has delivered far less gas to Germany this year"
Russia's share of Germany's gas imports just increased again to more than 55% this year [3] – and this is pre NordStream 2.
Except, the AfD is not ascendant. Polls show their support has been rather stagnant at about 10-11% for quite some time now. In the last election, they got 12.6% so they have actually lost some support since then.
There is also hardly anyone doubting that Russia would conduct such an operation. It's their modus operandi. Sympathy towards Russia also does not really rely upon sympathy towards the current government but on historical links.
I don't know about FDD in particular. They certainly have their own agenda. Wikipedia suggests neoconservative thought and proponents of hawkish US foreign policy [1]. So it's not surprising them supporting the publication.
FDD may be the landing page but the authors were the actual reason I thought this could be interesting to other people. I've read some of their publications before, skimmed through the report itself and realized that they aggregated a set of issues they have previously discussed in more than one paper. There are actually not many new facts if you read Sinocism [2], Axios China [3] or Sinoskop [4] from time to time.
Generally interested, what standards need to be fulfilled that you think a source provides 'trustworthy analysis'?
Background information and overview on the problem of illicit financial flows [1,2,3,4,5] - one of the key related issues. Deficient enforcement by public agencies in industrialized countries and lack of ethical behavior by intermediaries like banks enable theft, organized crime and worse. You can always complain about the use of exaggeration in media articles but the issues and consequences for many people are very real and not to be trifled with.
