Quote:
Originally Posted by Pierre
Is this
Not accurate?
---------- Post added at 22:27 ---------- Previous post was at 22:19 ----------
I take your point……but why isn’t it zero?
The other sad fact is, that if Ukraine hadn’t blown up Nordstream, Germany would probably still be in the weird position of giving Ukraine tanks but still be buying Russian gas.
You can’t claim to “stand with Ukraine” and at the same time put money in Russian pockets.
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Realpolitik - Hungary, for starters, really is a Trojan horse. Viktor Orban is a nasty piece of work who has been trying to stop sanctions and cash aid from the EU to Russia and has been leaned on pretty heavily by the other member states to go as far as he has. He isn’t about to stop using Russian gas and risk harming his own economy in a cause he opposes. Hungary’s deal with Russia gets them 4.5bn cubic metres of gas per year, which is the lion’s share of EU imports from Russia.
https://www.reuters.com/business/ene...on-2024-06-06/
There will be other critical requirements that have exemptions allowing Russian gas to be used where there are no alternatives. Some private companies are doubtless abusing that and not being as diligent as they could about where their supply comes from.
Re Nordstream, the
qui bono question is an interesting one - Ukraine is a knee-jerk response but it would have been enormously risky for them to damage German interests so spectacularly. Russia on the other hand was already using restricted supply (under the guise of ‘maintenance’) to signal a warning to Germany but as a result was having to pay Germany fines for breach of contract. A further clause exempts them from paying penalties for non-supply in the event of critical damage outside of their control. As things stand, they’re not supplying gas and not having to pay for not supplying it.
If it was Ukraine, though, good on them. Germany’s early response to all this was spineless in the extreme, and having put their head in a lion’s mouth by signing up to Nordstream 2 while everyone else was warning them not to was stupid. I wish there was a word for the sense of satisfaction you get from watching it all unravel.