Russia will not suffer. The victims are the European citizens who are being plunged into wretched economic hardship due to the machinations of American capital, its Banderite tools, and Euro fools.
This new year began with a new era that presages Europe sliding irrevocably into economic darkness and abject suzerainty under U.S. dominance.
Uncle Sam has won a decades-long ambition to dominate Europe entirely, thanks to the help from a NeoNazi regime in Ukraine and the pathetic European politicians who hail the slavery of Europe as some liberation.
The people of Europe are facing a foreboding period of economic hardship. We can confidently say that because the most fundamental of economic inputs – fuel energy – is about to become more expensive and precariously supplied for the European Union.
Russia’s decades-long energy relations with Europe are now severed. It seems an astounding final act of reckless self-harm.
The European Union’s economies have been floundering from an energy crisis caused by EU leaders willfully cutting off supplies of Russian gas. Now, with the last major transit route shut down, Europe is heading toward economic, social, and political self-destruction.
On Wednesday, New Year’s Day, the Ukrainian regime cut off the last supply route of Russian gas to the European Union. This regime, which glorifies Stepan Bandera and other Nazi-era fascists, is, in effect, holding the entire European Union hostage with its Russophobia and relentless corruption.
The arrogance and audacity are astonishing. The Ukrainian regime does not have an elected leader (Zelensky canceled elections last year), it is not a member of the EU, it has milked European taxpayers of hundreds of billions of Euros, and now has unilaterally shut down the last gas pipeline from Russia to the EU.
Ironically, the pipeline was called the Brotherhood Pipeline. It was conceived in the 1970s and began operating in the 1980s, carrying natural gas from Russia’s Western Siberia to the EU.
Ukraine received generous transit fees for the overland route. The decades-long era of transcontinental cooperation was killed on December 31 by a Banderite regime that has the cheek to claim its actions are virtuous to “stop Russian blood money”.
Incredibly, too, various European leaders also hailed the Ukrainian action as a liberation from Russian energy dependence. Some Western media even tried to cast Moscow as the villain that instigated the cut-off.
The New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, for example, inverted reality with the headline: “Russia ends exports of natural gas to Europe via Ukraine”.
To his credit, Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico seems to be the only sane leader among the EU’s 27 member states. He condemned what he called Ukraine’s “sabotage” of Europe’s energy supply and its economies. Fico warned that the European Union is facing a full-blown economic disaster as a result.
The Ukraine transit route supplied Slovakia, Austria, Italy and the Czech Republic. Now, those countries will have to find alternative supplies from international markets. The Ukrainian route also supplied Moldova, which is facing an immediate energy crisis. Russia claims that the Moldavian government owes outstanding bills for past gas supply.
The Brotherhood Pipeline harks back to an era of friendship and cooperation even though it was conceived during the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union. The 4,500-kilometer pipeline was partly financed by German capital.
Another ambitious Cold War-era supply route was the Yamal Pipeline, which ran over 4,100 km from Siberia to Poland and Germany. Its operation was halted in 2022 by Poland following the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine.
The more recently constructed Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines that ran 1,200 km under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany were blown up in 2022. That covert act of sabotage was no doubt carried out by the United States under the orders of President Joe Biden, according to the respected investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.
The upshot is that all major Russian natural gas supply lines to Europe have now been terminated. The only one remaining is Turk Stream which runs under the Black Sea to Turkey. But it mainly supplies Balkan countries that are not in the EU.
In the space of two years, Russia has gone from being the major supplier of EU gas imports (over 40 percent) to being a minor source. The big winner of the phenomenal market disruption is the United States, whose exports of liquefied natural gas to the EU have tripled.
Another winner is Norway, which is not an EU member. Other sources of gas for Europe are Azerbaijan and Algeria.
However, the unprecedented extra costs to Europe for this enormous rearrangement in its energy trade are encumbering the EU economies, industries and households with crippling burdens.
New pipelines have to be built, as well as new terminals to receive the shipped gas. U.S. exports cost 30 to 40 percent more than the Russian product.
The slump in the German economy from higher energy costs is directly caused by the cutting off of abundant and affordable Russian gas. And it is going to get even worse. The grim fate of Germany heralds the economic misery that the whole EU is sliding headlong into.
The history of Europe’s economic demise is as obvious as it is blatant.
Of course, it is all about the United States using and abusing its Western “allies” for its own interests. For Western imperialists, there is no such thing as allies, only interests. And the Americans are exacting that maxim to the hilt.
For decades, the U.S. has vehemently opposed the energy trade between the EU and Russia. Back in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan’s administration tried its best to block the development of the Brotherhood Pipeline with threats of economic sanctions.
The Americans openly said they didn’t want to see Europe and the Soviet Union developing cooperative relations.
At least in earlier times, the European governments appeared to have more independence and backbone. Germany, France, Italy and others rebuffed Washington’s demands to shut down the gas projects.
The long-running strategic aim of the U.S. to displace Russia as an energy supplier to Europe has now been realized. It’s a sign of the desperate times and lawlessness that American military operatives attack European infrastructure.
The blowing up of the Nord Stream pipelines and the proxy war in Ukraine have secured the strategic aim of the U.S. and its NATO proxy – keeping the Germans (Europeans) down, the Americans in, and the Russians out.
So much for the free-market capitalism and rules-based order that American and European elites preach. The practice is brute economic competition and dominance down the barrel of a gun.
Millions of lives have been destroyed in this “great game” of American imperialist chicanery, and the proxy war in Ukraine is risking the escalation to a nuclear Third World War.
The Banderite regime – an echo of the Nazi past – has enabled the United States to enslave Europe to Washington’s imperialist desires.
Tragically, a coterie of elitist European political leaders are so obsessed with Russophobia and servility to their American overlord that they are crowing with delight at cutting off Russia.
Russia will not suffer. Its vast energy resources are finding alternative lucrative global markets. The victims are the European citizens who are being plunged into wretched economic hardship due to the machinations of American capital, its Banderite tools, and Euro fools.
By SCF Editorial
Published by SCF
Republished by The 21st Century
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of 21cir.com