All Things Russia & Ukraine

[Seacoaster(1)]

Today is the 84th anniversary of Chamberlain’s visit to Munich. And Putin is annexing ethnic Russian “territory.” War crimes, a legion of international law violations, and the annexation of sovereign territory. The rest of the world let’s this guy carry on at enormous risk.

[a fan]

Tucker claims USA committed "terrorist act" and is responsible for sabotage of pipelines. BLAME AMERICA FIRST

Neat. Just how do you get to be this big of a POS. And why aren't patriotic FoxViewers calling for Tucker's head?

[Typical Lax Dad]

Tucker claims USA committed "terrorist act" and is responsible for sabotage of pipelines. BLAME AMERICA FIRST

Neat. Just how do you get to be this big of a POS. And why aren't patriotic FoxViewers calling for Tucker's head?

It’s America’s fault.

[youthathletics]

Tucker claims USA committed "terrorist act" and is responsible for sabotage of pipelines. BLAME AMERICA FIRST

Neat. Just how do you get to be this big of a POS. And why aren't patriotic FoxViewers calling for Tucker's head?

It’s America’s fault.

Always is.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Tucker claims USA committed "terrorist act" and is responsible for sabotage of pipelines. BLAME AMERICA FIRST

Neat. Just how do you get to be this big of a POS. And why aren't patriotic FoxViewers calling for Tucker's head?

It’s America’s fault.

Always is.

Yep. Old Jack Ryan says it all the time here. Normally you don’t comment on it.

[Brooklyn]

Moscow tries to draft fleeing Russian men at the borders


https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Mos ... 473231.php


Long lines of Russians trying to escape being called up to fight in Ukraine continued to clog highways out of the country on Wednesday, and Moscow reportedly set up draft offices at borders to intercept some of them ...

Tens of thousands of Russian men have fled in the week since President Vladimir Putin announced a mobilization to bolster struggling Russian forces in Ukraine ...

Georgia’s Interior Ministry said over 53,000 Russians had entered the country since last week.

There also are long lines at the border with Kazakhstan, which has taken in more than 98,000 Russians in the past week.



Had it been Americans trying to escape into Canada the right wingers would all be screaming and crying about it. Why the silence today from the self righteous holier-than-thou-and-better-than-you-can-ever-hope-to-be right wing delusionals?

[Seacoaster(1)]

Tom Nichols in the Atlantic:

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters ... ium=social

"Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a speech at a ceremony to incorporate partially Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine into the Russian Federation, finally and explicitly declared an end to more than seven decades of international order. During a meandering rant, Putin defended raw Russian imperialism while he spooled off about a number of topics, including the fall of the U.S.S.R., the power of Western hegemony, and the American use of nuclear weapons on Japan. But his underlying goal was to warn the rest of the world to cease its opposition to his war of conquest in Ukraine.

Putin’s incorporation of these areas into Russia is a major escalation in his seven-month campaign against Ukraine, and it raises the same question that has haunted many in the world regularly since the first days of the invasion: How worried should we be about this war becoming a larger European conflict and eventually a global cataclysm? My initial reaction: We should be worried, but we should also stand fast and tell Putin that if he means to destroy peace and order across the entire planet, we will oppose him just as we have helped Ukraine oppose him in Europe.

Putin’s rant was meant to make the world quail in fear. In reality, Putin is likely more terrified than anyone right now: He’s a Russian dictator losing a war of aggression, and he knows how that could end for him. In his speech, he justified the war in Ukraine using everything from the boundaries of ancient Russia to what he sees as the illegitimate dissolution of the Soviet Union. With sheer brass, he then complained about Western colonialism and human-rights violations—this, from the leader of a country with a long and bloody history, from the tsars to Stalin and beyond, of enslaving and murdering millions.

Most of Putin’s complaints are merely warmed-over Soviet-era cant—evidence yet again that Putin, whatever his former goals as a supposed reformer, has never been able to dislodge the hammer and sickle from his political DNA. More to the point, however, Putin said today that this Western decadence was, in fact, the foundation of the global order and thus needed to be overthrown:

And all we hear is, the West is insisting on a rules-based order. Where did that come from anyway? Who has ever seen these rules? Who agreed or approved them? Listen, this is just a lot of nonsense, utter deceit, double standards, or even triple standards! They must think we’re stupid.

Of course, the current international system was constructed after World War II with the participation of the Soviet Union itself, and the Russians have been beneficiaries of that order—and its economic rules and stability—for decades. Putin once supported it, before he mired himself in a war he could not win.

Addressing the regime in Kyiv and “their real bosses in the West,” Putin dove into a steaming vat of paranoia, grandiosity, and inferiority, a stew whose toxic fumes have always permeated the Kremlin. He claimed that the West hates “Russian philosophy and thought,” as if people in Washington and London spend a lot of time thinking about any of that. He fulminated about trans people—almost certainly hoping that the usual useful idiots in the right-wing American press will pick up on it—and referred to the “overthrow of faith and traditional values” in the West as equivalent to “Satanism.”

Putin might well believe at least some of this, but like most Russian elites, he somehow manages to maintain a pretty cozy relationship with the banks and fashion houses run by those ostensible devil worshippers. He is also, however, trying to rally the most retrograde segments of Russian society while seeking to split the West with his usual rhubarb about defending Christian values.

What’s really going on here is that Putin, facing military collapse along the Ukrainian front, is desperately trying to deter Ukraine and its supporters from another round of offensives. He is trying to flip the script, to turn Russia from the aggressor into the defender, and to recast his botched adventure as the Great Patriotic War 2.0, a defense of the Motherland against fascist invaders. To do this, he has turned occupied Ukrainian territory into “Russia” and magically transformed subjugated Ukrainians into “Russians.”

We can’t let him get away with it. Many readers of The Atlantic know that I have for months counseled American caution and restraint while also supporting military aid and money for Ukraine. I still do. But Putin has now said that he is at war with everything that the nations of the world—including Russia—have built since the end of World War II. His demand is to be allowed to brutalize whomever he chooses and seize whatever he wants. His threat, no longer even barely veiled, is that if he is not allowed to run amok and create bloodbaths by fiat, he will use nuclear weapons.

We didn’t stand down in the face of the Soviet system that created this gangster, and we should not stand down now. As NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said today, Ukraine has every right to recover its own territory and free its people. If Putin’s position is that this is cause for an even wider and more reckless conflict, then it is his choice, not ours.

I will have more to say about all of this in a longer analysis. But for today, the threat against all of us—Ukraine and the rest of the world—continues to mount. Opposing this Russian attack on the international order might require great sacrifice, but we must face the reality that no community of free nations can survive if it acquiesces to blackmail."

[Seacoaster(1)]

Or appeasement at any cost from -- you only get one guess....

https://twitter.com/RachelBitecofer/sta ... 5511956480

[Seacoaster(1)]

F@cking bonkers:

http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/69465

[DocBarrister]

F@cking bonkers:

http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/69465

This is one of the biggest Ukrainian victories yet. Ukraine retakes Lyman just one day after Putin illegally “annexes” the Donbas region of Ukraine.

Lyman, which fell to the Russians in May, serves as a rail hub that flows into Donbas, the mineral rich region in the Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk provinces that has long been the focus of Mr. Putin’s war aims.

Ukraine’s ability to recapture Lyman is the most significant proof yet that Russia’s ability to control the Donbas is anything but certain.

With Lyman under Ukrainian control the battle for the Donbas enters a new phase. The city’s recapture means that Ukraine’s troops have gained a new foothold in the region and are positioned to claw back territory before winter sets in.

… Two powerful supporters of President Vladimir V. Putin turned on Russia’s military leadership on Saturday after it ordered a retreat from a key city in eastern Ukraine, a striking sign of dissent within the Russian elite that comes as the Kremlin tries to project an image of strength and unity.

Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman leader of the southern Russian republic of Chechnya, wrote on the Telegram messaging app that Russia’s top military brass had “covered for” an “incompetent” general who should now be “sent to the front to wash his shame off with blood.”

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the business magnate close to Mr. Putin who leads the Wagner group —an army of mercenaries fighting for Russia in the war — issued a statement an hour later declaring that he agreed with Mr. Kadyrov.

“Send all these pieces of garbage barefoot with machine guns straight to the front,” Mr. Prigozhin said in an apparent reference to Russia’s military leaders.

The Kremlin’s military leadership, including Defense Minister Sergei K. Shoigu, a close associate of Mr. Putin, has come under increasingly withering criticism in recent months from some pro-war Russian bloggers, who view them as corrupt bureaucrats failing as military strategists. That criticism expanded after Russia’s stunning retreat in northeastern Ukraine last month.

But the fury on Saturday after Russia lost the city of Lyman, a key rail hub, was extraordinary both in its timing and the fact that it was coming not just from commentators on social media, but from senior allies of Mr. Putin.

It underscored that the retreat marked a major embarrassment for the Kremlin, coming just 24 hours after the festivities in Moscow marking the attempted annexation of four Ukrainian regions by Mr. Putin that Western officials have decried as illegal.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/10/01 ... e-war-news

DocBarrister

[old salt]

A sobering forecast for the EU for this & future winters, published in the National Review magazine edition.

How Europe Invited Its Energy Crisis

By ANDREW STUTTAFORD
September 29, 2022 1:59 PM

Decarbonization and bureaucratization put a weapon in Putin’s hands
The historian Barbara Tuchman famously compared European civilization before the First World War to a “proud tower” but showed how that tower was more rickety than those at its summit imagined. The pride was overdone, the hubris all too real.

If Europe today can be symbolized by a similarly proud tower, one candidate might be a giant North Sea wind turbine in September 2021, its blades barely turning thanks to winds that had dropped, unexpectedly, for weeks. This unproductive calm had led to a scramble for other sources of power to remedy the shortfall. But the price of one obvious alternative, natural gas, was already soaring (the European benchmark, Dutch front-month gas, was around five times as high as it had been two years before).

In part, this was due to the post-pandemic surge in demand, but something else was going on too. From the middle of 2021 Russia had declined to boost sales of gas to satisfy Europe’s growing need. That mattered. The EU imported roughly 40 percent of its gas from Russia, and looking elsewhere wasn’t straightforward. With the notable exception of Norway, Western Europe’s gas production has been declining for years. This owes something to dwindling reserves and something to fossil-fuel companies’ reluctance to spend the money required to find new ones, for reasons that include the disapproval of a climate establishment that now includes major investors.

Various explanations for Russia’s behavior were circulating last fall. We’ll never know for sure, but the best guess now must be that it was mainly designed as a demonstration of Russia’s clout, the first act in an attempt to use the leverage its gas had given it to force Europe to accept Moscow’s expansionist ambitions. In mid December 2021, with its troops massing on Ukraine’s border, Russia set out demands that would, if agreed to, have consigned Ukraine to Moscow’s sphere of influence and raised unsettling questions over what Eastern European membership in NATO really meant. That all this helped take European gas prices to levels some four times as high as they had been at the beginning of September would not have escaped Vladimir Putin.

It made some sense for Moscow to assume that merely brandishing its energy weapon would limit the European response to an attack on Ukraine. Both NATO and the EU included member states known for their less-than-robust approach to defense, or for attitudes toward Russia that ranged from the naïve to the not unsympathetic. A “reminder” to those most dependent on Russia for their energy requirements (Russia had also supplied some 35 percent of the EU’s oil and about 20 percent of its coal in 2020) would surely persuade them — to the extent that they needed persuading — to stay on the sidelines in the event of a “special military operation.”

Germany, the most important of NATO’s weaker links, would have weighed heavily in such thinking. Since the opening of the Nord Stream 1 pipelines in 2011 and 2012 it had become even more reliant on Russian gas (in 2021, 55 percent of Germany’s gas came from Russia), and yet was intent on deepening that dependence with Nord Stream 2, a project agreed to after the first invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea (only now has it been abandoned). Russia also provided one-third of Germany’s oil and about 50 percent of its hard coal. Germany’s vulnerability to Russian coercion had only been increased by the destructive impact of its Energiewende (energy transition) on its energy resilience. Starting in 2010, this featured hugely expensive and poorly planned investment in renewables driven by climate fears, and a re-acceleration away from nuclear energy driven by almost superstitious dread. Germany’s last three nuclear-power stations were due to be shut down at the end of this year, but two of them will now be kept open on a standby basis for a little longer. In another shift, Germany has now chartered five floating terminals to import liquefied natural gas (LNG), two of which should be ready this year. Previously, the country had none, floating or fixed. With so much gas coming from its reliable Russian partners, why bother?

Germany may have been an extreme case, but to varying degrees, its mistakes were repeated across much of Europe by a governing class convinced both that its climate policies would be an example that the world would follow and that the march toward a rules-based international order (where the EU would be setting many of the rules) was irreversible. Europe’s “race to net zero” greenhouse-gas emissions would, it was claimed, be accomplished not only (relatively) painlessly, but rapidly. These claims bear scant resemblance to what is achievable — central planners are like that. The “race” — and the malinvestment that preceded it — embedded the energy insecurity that may have helped Russia believe that it could get away with the major European war that, to many Western Europeans, was an impossibility in the rules-based 21st century of their collective imagination.

That said, seven months since that war began, it’s evident that the Kremlin has underestimated Europeans’ willingness (so far) to stick with Ukraine even if it meant losing access to Russia’s energy resources, a willingness underlined by their decision to phase out most Russian oil imports by year’s end.

Bans on Russian coal imports are already in full effect. For its part, Russia has been steadily decreasing its gas exports to Europe, calculating that the resulting economic pain — and the political turmoil and social disorder that it might provoke — would erode European support for Ukraine. That would be worth more to Moscow than export revenues forgone. Some European countries have had their supplies cut off altogether. And gas no longer flows through Nord Stream 1 (which was used to transport some 35 percent of Russian gas exports to the EU last year), although Russian gas continues to reach Europe through two other pipelines (at, naturally, a reduced rate), but for how long?

Energy providers have been badly hit. Some, denied the cheaper gas they were due from Gazprom, the Russian state-controlled energy company, have had to turn to the spot market to buy the gas they had to deliver to their customers at (much lower) contractual rates, a mismatch that has bankrupted some and led to bailouts or the nationalization of others. A large number failed in the U.K. after the spot price shot past the legal maximum (which until August was changed only semiannually) they could charge their clients. Other utilities are running or may run into liquidity problems arising out of hedging operations in the derivatives markets. The observation by Finland’s energy minister that this could be “the energy sector’s version of [the] Lehman Brothers” moment may have been exaggerated, but Sweden’s prime minister also talked of risks to financial stability. Measures to support utilities have been introduced in Finland, Sweden, and elsewhere, and they are unlikely to be the last.

The pricing of European electricity is another twist of the knife. Typically it is aligned with the cost of the most expensively generated power required to satisfy demand. Thus the current gas price is pulling the price of electricity far above the overall cost of its generation. Strange as it may seem, this marginal-pricing regime encourages efficient production and consumption. Nevertheless, it looks set to be replaced, quite possibly de facto rather than de jure, by the proposed price cap on low-carbon producers mentioned below.

Mounting economic troubles could easily lead to conflict within the EU and NATO, a long-term Kremlin objective. Even if we disregard Hungary, a perennial outlier (true to form, it recently struck a deal that will increase the amount of gas it receives from Russia), there is plenty of potential for division, not least over the willingness to share energy across borders in the event of a supply crunch. This could be peculiarly treacherous territory for Brexit Britain, outside the Brussels laager. Even though gas — about half of which is imported — accounted for roughly 40 percent of the U.K.’s energy use in 2021 and heated some 80 percent of its homes, Britain has little gas storage and a growing dependence on interconnectors to import electricity from European neighbors that may now be facing shortages themselves.

With 2022 being what it is, France, which in 2021 supplied around half of Britain’s imported electricity, is grappling with major problems in its ageing and under-maintained nuclear-power stations. Nuclear energy normally provides approximately 70 percent of France’s electricity, but more than half of its reactors have had, temporarily, to close. The first of these should start restarting shortly, with the others joining in time for winter. All the same, businesses will soon have to explain how they can reduce their electricity consumption by 10 percent. Other users too will be expected to show that they understand that France has entered, to use President Macron’s term, an era of energy “sobriété.” The City of Light will dim this winter.

Signs of damage already inflicted by higher energy costs are hard to miss. They have contributed to inflation (annual euro-zone inflation stood at 9.1 percent in August), and central bankers are hiking rates in response, a painful necessity. Manufacturers, particularly in energy-intensive sectors, are cutting production, unable to pass on enough of their increased costs to their customers. According to Eurometaux, 50 percent of the EU’s aluminum and zinc capacity has been “forced offline.” Other shutdowns include fertilizer manufacturers, cement-makers, and steelmakers. Most are described as temporary. We’ll see. Unsurprisingly, both U.K. and euro-zone consumer-confidence levels are at their lowest since records began.

Measures taken or under way to protect households and businesses from running into further difficulty will cost European governments an estimated $500 billion (including price caps in the U.K.), a number that doesn’t include the cost of sorting out the embattled energy providers. And there will almost certainly be more spending to come. Some of this will likely be funded, if the EU Commission (its administrative arm) gets its way, by windfall taxes or, to use the Brussels euphemism, “solidarity contributions” on fossil-fuel companies and revenue caps on low-carbon generators. Adding to the pressure for relief, many energy buyers have been sheltered from surging prices by longer-term contracts, but, as time passes, those expire.

Price-driven demand destruction for gas (not an encouraging economic indicator), complemented by voluntary (for now) efforts within the EU to reduce consumption by 15 percent and some success in finding other sources of supply (or replacing gas with substitutes such as, cough, cough, coal), has, along with buying programs, some of which are now mandatory up to a certain level under EU law, led to storage facilities that are over 85 percent full, above average for this time of year. This offers some hope that the worst result — rationing — can be avoided this winter, although without the prospect of much in the way of top-ups, “above average” may well not be sufficient, especially if it’s colder than usual. Optimists will note that the benchmark price for gas has fallen a long way since a spike in mid August, the first sustained reversal for months, although it is still over three times as high as it was in late September 2021. But that hasn’t stopped the EU Commission from eyeing electricity demand and proposing a mix of compulsory and voluntary curbs this winter. Around 18 percent of Europe’s electricity was generated in gas-fired power plants in 2021. Meanwhile, the Baltic states are bracing for disconnection from the Russian grid, which would bring blackouts in its wake, although they should be able to plug into the European network within hours.

Quite how far Europe’s economy will fall is unknowable. Predictions of a mild recession, let alone any growth, are being torn up. Deutsche Bank is now forecasting a 3 percent drop in the euro-zone’s GDP (a number that will, of course, vary from country to country) between the middle of this year and mid 2023, and (wisely) won’t rule out “an even sharper winter downturn.” Much will depend on how far any rationing has to reach and where it bites deepest. Germany is, in many respects, Europe’s manufacturing hub: Prolonged shutdowns there could have devastating knock-on effects across the continent. And the steeper the slump, the harder the knock to support for Ukraine. Voters will probably put up with darkened shop windows, unilluminated monuments, and colder offices, but their patience will be put to a harsh test by disappearing jobs, blackouts, and interruptions in the heating of their homes. There’s also the question of whether a slump could trigger the renewed euro-zone crisis that has, with Italy on investors’ minds, been brewing for a while now.

Even if Europeans weather the winter, they will not be home free. It’s hard to imagine that Russia’s gas will be turned back on anytime soon, let alone that it could reestablish itself as a trustworthy supplier. Filling the gap left by Russian energy resources will take quite some time. Energy costs will remain high for a while. And so will the spending by governments defraying the worst of the consequences. The Europe that eventually emerges from this ordeal will be more heavily indebted, more heavily taxed, more heavily regulated, and considerably less competitive. More immediately, 2022–23 will be only the first of several tricky winters: To start with, there will be no Russian gas to refill storage facilities left depleted by the end of the winter that is almost upon us.

There is no quick fix. Traditional suppliers such as Norway don’t have enough additional capacity to make a material difference to the effort to replace Russian gas. To be sure, LNG has already been helpful and will mean more supplies coming from farther afield. But LNG is a global product, and Europeans will, as they did this year, have to battle with Asian buyers to secure a supply until more export capacity is built. That will take years, not months, and on the European side more import capacity should be added too. And, yes, there is currently a shortage of LNG tankers.

French and British plans to build a series of new nuclear-power stations (including the quicker-to-build small modular reactors) are welcome (and might assist in a wider nuclear renaissance) but will take years to come to fruition. Renewables can be built out more quickly but by themselves are too unreliable to solve Europe’s energy conundrum. The backstop they need has been gravely weakened by overenthusiastic decarbonization. But European fossil-fuel companies, for the reasons referred to above, will hesitate to invest in the new development projects that ought to be part of the solution, even if gas has recently been designated by the EU as a green “transitional” fuel for financing purposes. The fact that even the prospect of increased LNG exports to Europe raises objections from some climate activists sends a clear signal.

This is perversely appropriate. Europe’s rushed and reckless moves toward decarbonization destabilized its energy system and handed Moscow an opportunity it should never have been given. Undeterred, the EU’s leadership claims that this catastrophe only strengthens the case for moving away from fossil fuels, which must, they argue, proceed apace. As Blackadder’s Anthony Melchett, a somewhat unfair caricature of a British general in the First World War, put it:

“If nothing else works, a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.”

This article appears as “The Proud Tower” in the October 17, 2022, print edition of National Review.

[MDlaxfan76]

Yes, there is no quick fix, thus appeasement of Russia ain’t an option. Counterproductive.

Focusing on replacing Russian energy is only option.

[old salt]

For the short term, Putin just demonstrated how he can make things even worse by taking out the other Baltic pipelines that bring NG from the west. How much more risk are the EUros willing to tolerate. Orban already made a deal to keep Russian gas flowing to Hungary via land pipelines.

[DocBarrister]

For the short term, Putin just demonstrated how he can make things even worse by taking out the other Baltic pipelines that bring NG from the west. How much more risk are the EUros willing to tolerate. Orban already made a deal to keep Russian gas flowing to Hungary via land pipelines.

It won’t be an easy winter for the EU.

However, in the long run, Putin has only hastened the demise of the Russian fossil fuel industry.

Putin dreams of a divided Europe, but Europe will be unified in eliminating its dependence on Russian oil, natural gas, and coal.

DocBarrister

[old salt]

The EUros plan to eliminate the use of fossil fuels & nuclear power for energy is working out great for them.

What could go wrong ? Read, fire, aim.

[Kismet]

More typical right wing propaganda. Demonize the EUro allies (except fascist types in Hungary and Italy) and congratulate the Rooskies. Must be good to be with the Tucker & Tulsi crowd primetime on RT. You all never seem to disappoint in this regard. It's really mystifying.

CPAC had to take down a pro-Russian tweet over the weekend that looked like it was written by the Kremlin featuring waving Russian flags. When do you begin to advocate to Orange Cheato to mediate?

It was reported today that Russian dead in Ukraine to date are over 62 000 not to mention lost equipment and ammunition. They have not conscripted soldiers since WWII.

[Typical Lax Dad]

More typical right wing propaganda. Demonize the EUro allies (except fascist types in Hungary and Italy) and congratulate the Rooskies. Must be good to be with the Tucker & Tulsi crowd primetime on RT. You all never seem to disappoint in this regard. It's really mystifying.

CPAC had to take down a pro-Russian tweet over the weekend that looked like it was written by the Kremlin. When do you begin to advocate to Orange Cheato to mediate?

It was reported today that Russian dead in Ukraine to date are over 62 000 not to mention lost equipment and ammunition. They have not conscripted soldiers since WWII.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confede ... %80%931864

It was effective for the grand Ol’ South.

[a fan]

The EUros plan to eliminate the use of fossil fuels & nuclear power for energy is working out great for them.

What could go wrong ? Read, fire, aim.

And Russia, that's out of men, ammo, and money........who do you think they're going to sell their gas to if they stick it to all of Europe for an entire winter?

What happens when demand for your product drops by an entire freaking continent?

But sure, the EU is the only dumb crew here. Win the battle, lose the war.

NATO is broken, and has been since Turkey took Russian arms, and much of the rest of NATO took Russian gas.

[Kismet]

The EUros plan to eliminate the use of fossil fuels & nuclear power for energy is working out great for them.

What could go wrong ? Read, fire, aim.

And Russia, that's out of men, ammo, and money........who do you think they're going to sell their gas to if they stick it to all of Europe for an entire winter?

What happens when demand for your product drops by an entire freaking continent?

But sure, the EU is the only dumb crew here. Win the battle, lose the war.

NATO is broken, and has been since Turkey took Russian arms, and much of the rest of NATO took Russian gas.

and as Tom Friedman points out

"There is only one cardinal sin in the energy business: Never, ever, ever make yourself an unreliable supplier. No one will ever trust you again. Putin has made himself an unreliable supplier to some of his oldest and best customers."

When this Putin ploy doesn't work, he's screwed as his only customers left are China and India who will pay a fraction per unit that his old customers paid. If he overplays his had militarily, they will likely eventually opt out, too.

But let's blame our allies and give Russia a pass. Sure thing.

[DocBarrister]

Putin has completely failed to prepare Russia for a transition to a 21st-century economy.

When Russia loses its war against Ukraine … and Russia will indeed lose that war … all that will remain is a pauper nation with a massive nuclear arsenal heavily reliant on a 20th-century fossil fuel industry. Putin’s war and war crimes will only hasten that industry’s demise and Russia’s collapse into abject poverty.

What you will have is a Russia with a tiny economy and nuclear weapons that is led by a murderous dictator.

North Korea on steroids.

Instead of leading Russia into a resurrected Russian Empire, Putin has instead led his nation into a humiliating demotion into third-world status.

DocBarrister