61–70 of 204 posts
EU continues to important Russian oil, it has just been refined and rebadged by India, Saudi Arabia, China and others, so that a statement like this could be made. EU is basically paying a premium in order to stake a claim to moral high ground they don't hold
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Fossil fuel prices in Europe are actually back to pre-war levels. (Nevertheless, inflation is still rather high but that seems unrelated to energy now.)
There were already quite inflated for at least half a year or so prior to the war.
The prices will likely jump again in the fall/winter (but likely nowhere near to the 2022 winter).
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So do you suggest throwing Ukraine under the bus for cheap energy?
Let's rephrase "throwing Ukraine under a bus" as "not getting involved in a border dispute between two Eastern European countries", and maybe the answer is less obvious.
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> EU is basically paying a premium in order to stake a claim to moral high ground they don't hold Not really, EU is paying a market rate just like the rest of the world. It's just that a big part of the profit which would normally go to Russia now goes to middlemen. The price cap was designed to reduce Russian profits without reducing Russian oil exports..
Europe used to get pipeline gas at a fixed price, and now it's getting LNG at a much higher rate that fluctuates with the market.
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> but the Russians are too stupid to understand it Who said they don't understand it? What can they do about it? Nothing.
They can impose their own sanctions preventing the fuel from being resold, or even better, cut a deal that by reselling the fuel the revenue still goes to Russia.
EU traded off massive inflation for independence from Russian fossil fuels. A victory for politicians, not so much for the Otto Normalverbraucher.
Not being dependent from terrorist state for basic necessities like fuel is worth it.
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Europe used to get pipeline gas at a fixed price, and now it's getting LNG at a much higher rate that fluctuates with the market.
Sure, but before that gas was funding a self professed foe. It's much better to not fund your enemies.
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> but the Russians are too stupid to understand it Who said they don't understand it? What can they do about it? Nothing.
They can impose their own sanctions preventing the fuel from being resold, or even better, cut a deal that by reselling the fuel the revenue still goes to Russia.
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We could discuss the 2014 events for hours and in any case the shelling has been going from both directions. But there's one clear fact - the war in Donbas was calming down in intensity in the years preceding 2022. In the three years 2019-2021, 78 civilians died in total, mostly from old unexploded mines. There was absolutely no "need" to make it a full scale war and ramp up the number to tens of thousands civilians…
Ukraine was preparing a war to take back donbas, and there was no "calming down". The problem is, that the media changed their stories after the start of war. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/osce-reports-surge-numb... > MOSCOW, Feb 19 (Reuters) - Two regions in eastern Ukraine where government and separatist forces have been fighting since 2014 were hit by more than 1,400 explosions on Friday, monitors for the O…
It's sad that there's absolutely zero evidence of that except for Kremlin's justification for its own invasion. Isn't this excuse as old as war? "we had to invade, otherwise they would invade us".
> This was just before russia entered the war.
Well, exactly. Russia was looking for casus beli. There were reports of increased separatist shelling, they likely wanted to provoke Ukraine into moving first, very similar playbook to 2008 Georgian war.
The price cap on Russian gas effectively sets a maximum price that those enforcing the cap will pay. This means that Russia can't sell at full price because even those not enforcing the cap aren't willing to pay full price for it (why should they, when Russia's choices of customers are severely limited?). It's an artificially induced market pressure to keep prices down.
Does it stop Russian gas from flowing? No, but that's not the point; the point is to reduce Russia's profits from the gas. The world still gets all their gas, but Russia gets far less money for it.
Does it mean that Russian gas doesn't make it to Europe anymore? Nope. In fact, "Russian" gas probably makes up a big chunk of imports to price cap countries. But since Russia can't charge full price for its gas, the profits go to the middlemen, who raise prices to the actual market rate and pocket the difference while shipping to whoever (including price cap countries, because once it's owned by the middleman it's no longer "Russian" gas, but regular market rate gas).
So what is this "independence from Russian gas" all about then? It's about not being directly dependent upon Russia for providing the gas (i.e. Russia can't threaten to turn off the taps if Europe doesn't toe the line). The only thing Russia could do now is stop supplying gas to everyone, which would be even worse than the reduced profits they're suffering already.