In a press release Thursday, the German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) said that Germany’s inflation rate increased 8.7% year over year in January, and 1% monthly.

The preliminary data indicated that consumer prices, harmonized for comparison to other European Union countries, rose by 9.2% year over year, which was less than anticipated. Destatis noted that prices increased 0.5% compared with December.

According to Reuters, harmonized data had been expected by analysts to increase by 10.0% year over year, and 1.2% on the month.

Alexander Krueger, chief economist at Hauck Aufhaeuser Lampe Privatbank, said to Reuters, “Because core inflation will remain high in 2023, a fundamental easing of inflation is not in sight.”

As cheap gas deliveries from Russia plummeted amid the geopolitical fallout from Russia’s military actions in Ukraine, German inflation soared to record levels. Issues with pipeline maintenance of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline were complicated by sanctions leading to reductions in flow, before a sabotage attack on the pipeline removed all possibility of its service.

As the gas supply was constrained by the removal of the Russian supplies, energy prices soared, driven higher by fears of European nations that they would fail to secure enough gas to heat their citizen’s homes through the winter, and those price increases spread to the prices of other consumer goods, setting off a cost of living crisis.

Economy Minister Robert Habeck noted last month that it is now expected that the German economy will avoid a precipitous decline, however it would enter a technical recession sometime this year.