> You can see data on US LNG imports to the EU here. [1] After the invasion they more than tripled with the US now accounting for more than 58% of EU imports. Gas prices are up more than 10x relative to their lowest lowest in the 2020 before the war. [2] The EU was most certainly a growth market, if Russian supplies to the EU could be disrupted.
Pointing at the wrong thing: consider not EU imports but US exports, which went from 3,865,643 in 2022 to 4,343,027 in 2023.
Those gas prices surged very quickly, but the spike was very short-lived. The change in longer-term averages was much smaller than the spike; from your own link, the US total from 2020-2025, in dollars per thousand cubic feet: 5.64, 7.62, 12.24, 7.57, 6.41, 7.92.
> However, war with e.g. Germany seems entirely nonsensical.
To us (I mean, their troops are bogged down within a few tens of kilometres of their own borders), but the media rhetoric is that kind of revanchism.
> But let's just assume there is a threat for the sake of discussion. How does escalating this conflict, …, aim to reduce such? And how would aiming for reconciliation and de-escalation not be a much more reasonable way to achieve such?
First, the soft-touch approach was already tried with Crimea.
Second, consider Russia's stated aims with their "special military operation", which they still do not officially call a war. They invaded with words translated as "de-Nazification", but their use of the term means something very different to how it is understood in the west: ~"the enemy of Moscow". Consider that Ukraine was not actually threat, yet they invaded anyway under the pretence that they might at some unspecified time in the future join NATO: the Russian leadership today (not always) sees NATO as a threat, treats NATO membership as being a signal of being in the sphere of influence of the USA rather than voluntary mutual self-defence. Putin does not recognise the sovereignty of any nation that is not a "great power", regards Ukrainian nationality as fiction.
And third, we know that civilians in the occupied territories get conscripted and sent into war against the rest of Ukraine. Documented in Crimea as well as the more recently occupied parts Ukraine. So, the more Ukraine loses, the more of its own people and infrastructure becomes the tool of the invading forces to take more. Losing all of Ukraine means that all of Ukraine gets pointed at wherever Putin wants Russia to invade next.
> explicitly targeting civilian infrastructure [3],
> you end up with the point that [3] not only serves no viable military purpose,
Dual-use. It's not great that it is a target, but I think Amazon warehouses would probably get targeted similarly if e.g. the US tries this with Canada, given https://www.amazon.com/s?k=bullet+proof+vest+mens (no comment if any of this is good for more than cosplay, I wouldn't know).
(Edit: But also, consider that strikes by Ukraine against targets inside Russia were restricted by the Biden administration. The end of direct support by the USA coincided with Ukraine feeling free to make such attacks, so to the extent that the US can be seen as supporting Ukraine in this conflict, it was the exact force of moderation, holding Ukraine back, as is now called for.)
> putting Ukrainians in an even worse situation, increasing food scarcity and such, all with winter on the horizon
Not really "worse": in this regard they are in a bad position every winter, because Russia has never had a problem attacking Ukrainian food, power, or other civilian assets.
Also, these strikes against Wildberries make it much harder for civilians to directly supply their conscripted families (and those civilians kinda have to, given the military often doesn't bother with even the basics to the extent a new Russian soldier's average life expectancy on the front line is measured in minutes).
> US interests in Europe are ensuring we maintain the dominant force in their geopolitical positioning. I think that is probably now more true than ever before.
If we are clear "US interests" != "Trump's personal interest", yes. Trump is throwing away that position of dominant force in European geopolitical positioning.