‘Pure Blackmail’: Russia Escalates Energy War
The energy wars were above the fold again on Wednesday. Not that they ever retreated to the back page.
Gazprom cut flows to Denmark as the country voted on dropping a 30-year-old EU security and defense opt-out in response to Russia's actions in Ukraine.
"Gazprom has maintained its demand that [we] pay for gas supplies in rubles," Denmark's Orsted said, adding that it's "under no obligation to do so under the contract, and the company will continue to pay in euros."
In a statement, Gazprom sa
I don’t get how Europe and its leaders cannot clearly explain the situation to Europeans.
Two key inputs, food and energy, have gotten rarer due no one’s fault (well, Putin’s). Therefore, they have gone up in price and we have to sacrifice other goodies to maintain our consumption of these. Indeed, most of us are lucky that the worse we’re going to experience is reworking our budgets to accommodate higher prices. People (mostly) elsewhere may well die.
One way to ease that general pain would be solidarity – the richest amongst us could help the poorest. At whatever national or super-national scale we can still generate a feeling of compassion and a sense of collective cohesion.
This is war. Indirect and economic as it might be, but war nonetheless. Redistribute your spending and, if you’re really wealthy, accept the small discomfort of higher taxes for the greater good of your community. There’s no guarantee you’d be an oligarch under a Putin.
I share your incredulity, and extend that to cover the US as well. A five-minute prime-time speech would do it to start. Then have periodic fireside chats.
Yes ; it’s funny how in an era of 24/7 news channel and constant press meetings etc, you cannot actually get a vast majority of people’s attention for 5 minutes.
In France specifically, you got the 2nd round presidential debate (but that’s campaigning) and the New Year Eve’s address that are generally well followed. In the US, I can only think of the State of the Union but, again, it’s a bit too long/too heavy with posturing.