Winters are cold and they don’t want to freeze to death as their grandfathers in 1941 (https://archive.is/csslJ).
They can’t burn coal for political reasons (green party), there is no enough solar generation, especially under winter sun, so they burn natural gas, which is cleanest fossil fuel.
The Whole West World is compromised because none of our institutions prevented this nor were the guilty war criminals prosecuted.
Dictators don't care what people outside their dictatorship think and do, unless it possesses direct threat to their power. Russia has nukes and seems do not care about sanctions (I mean, starving people without access to medications is not a reason to care for Putin), so Merkel would unlikely receive any explanation from Putin, he's to busy posing on a horse with a naked torso for Western magazines.
If he just outright killed the man the news cycle probably would have moved on a while ago.
I imagine he is delighted by how this is all going.