Washing one's hand while wringing them

We have come a long way since Peter Snow sparked outrage in 1982 after a Newsnight broadcast when reading out a government report by the British government on the progress of the Falklands War because he prefaced it with: "If we believe the British..."  Now, in Jeremy Paxman's cynical worldview, his modus operandi is "why is this lying bastard lying to me" (maybe he has to leave Newsnight because it is bad for his soul but will he continue to berate the students on University Challenge?) but it is a wary line to tread, where taking a contrarian view can give succour unintentionally to the other side, be it a domestic political party or another country.  On the Today programme this morning, John Humphrys grilled Foreign Secretary William Hague over the Ukraine crisis, repeating all of the lies and propaganda of the Russian side.  Hague did a very skilful if bemused denunciation of these claims as false but, in trying to give the viewpoint of a pro-Russian separatists (not that they would be listening, tuning in only to Russian broadcasting), Humphrys gave an impersonation of working for Russia Today, the Kremlin-linked news channel (albeit one of the employees who did not resign live on air).  There are many ways to take Hague to task over the West's timid and confused response to events in Crimea and the Ukrainian mainland but to parrot lazily the line spun by Moscow (that has already been discredited in the public domain) is Wikipedia-style journalistic research and a missed opportunity.  It is compounded because Sergei Lavrov would not be submitting himself to such an interrogation by Humphrys.
Mind you, Berlin seems bewitched by Russian propaganda, partly because Russia supplies 45% of Germany's gas imports, partly because Germany takes pacifism to Gandhian extremes (Gandhi favoured more appeasement when Germany invaded Poland in 1939).  The liquidation of Prussia and all it stood for was necessary to break the authoritarian spell but now its elite is extremely reluctant to use force (when such force isn't beered-up cf. Afghanistan) beyond its borders and thus prepared to let atrocities occur, on a nothing-to-do with us - it is too well-trained.  The clichéd German passenger that opposed tackling the 9/11 hijackers in the film United 93 (the polar opposite of Harry Enfield's crude, ranting caricature), drew such a furore for the surmised conversation because it was a little too close to the bone, as we now know that such a course of inaction in trying to save the plane through dialogue would lead to doom for more than just himself and the other passengers (the passengers fought back and the plane crashed in Pennsylvanian fields before it could reach its target in Washington D.C.).  Berlin should listen to one of its more famous sons, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me."
The German Foreign Ministry tells its citizens to leave Donetsk (which is still relatively peaceful), not to mention all of eastern and southern Ukraine because 'war appears imminent'.  Yet Germany has fiercely opposed the kind of sanctions that would make Russia reconsider its involvement - it is fairly clear that Russian special forces are fomenting unrest, as Vladimir Putin himself has admitted to their presence in Crimea before the annexation.  Angela Merkel has expressed her fury on occasion in her tenure such as criticising Benjamin Netanyhu in a way unprecedented for a German chancellor towards a leader of the State of Israel but ultimately her government's policy does not change.  So as Berlin washes its hands of anything to do with Ukraine, in a not dissimilar fashion to Pilate, it wrings its hands over the onset of civil war.  It has already made its mind up that nothing can be done and so it will do nothing (rather than soberly assessing whether something can be done).  States do not act out of morality but keenly realised self-interest and those in the Reichstag are deluding themselves as to what is their self-interest.