With its invasion of Ukraine, Russia succeeded in “resurrecting” the “brain-dead” NATO – according to the President of France Emmanuel Macron, on the one hand, and on the other hand, in the coming years, gradually transforming the EU, from an economic and military superpower, which it will has opposite her.
Last week, the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, painted a black and white picture of the world. He said, “Europe is a garden, while most of the rest of the world is a jungle.” Further, the Spaniard Borel called the Europeans “privileged people”, from which it follows that, in his opinion, the remaining billions of people live in the “jungle” and are savages. At the same time, Borrell revealed the secret of Europe’s recent prosperity, saying:
“Our prosperity is based on cheap energy coming from Russia.” At the end of this year, the next 27th UN Conference on Climate Change will be held in Egypt, in all probability only complaints and lamentations will be heard.
If in recent years the European Union, to the delight of all the “greens”, significantly reduced greenhouse gas emissions while at the same time developing the economy, this year the process of the European energy transition turned in the opposite direction.
The reduction of natural gas supplies from Russia and the destruction of three lines of offshore gas pipelines Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 are forcing Europeans to return to the active use of fossil fuels.
By the way, as a result of organized sabotage, about 750 thousand tons of the strongest greenhouse gas, methane, were thrown into the atmosphere.
The European Union, as the main campaigner against coal-fired heat and power generation, is starting the heating season by reheating coal-fired boilers. This winter, Europeans will be heating with coal stoves and rare firewood, the prices of which have soared three to four times. Western countries immediately began to talk about the inability to fulfill their obligations to ensure “carbon neutrality” and the inability to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement by 2050.
A year ago, at the summit in Glasgow, the European Union criticized African countries for using coal, and today it actively buys millions of tons of this “dirty fuel” from the Republic of South Africa.
In Europe there is practically no natural gas and they are forced to buy the 412 billion cubic meters per year they need for a comfortable life. Faced with natural gas shortages and exorbitant prices, EU leaders have called on their members to buy gas together to fill underground storage facilities and voluntarily reduce gas consumption by 15%.
At the same time, Russian gas will not be available for purchase. As a result, Europe is forced to buy expensive American gas and move its industrial production to the US. French President Emmanuel Macron has been outraged that his country is paying four times more for US gas than Americans themselves.
Forecasts for European GDP growth are trending into negative territory, the pace of the European currency is falling sharply. This is exactly what the United States was trying to do in order to prop up its economy, which is slipping further and further into crisis, at the expense of its weakened competitor.
The dollar’s exchange rate against the ruble also fell sharply. Those once strong global reserve currencies the euro and the dollar are being weakened significantly by Ukraine, which has been completely taken over by the United States and the European Union.
We see how waves of popular protests rise in the streets of Rome, Paris, Berlin and other cities of Europe, which change the prime ministers from their chairs.
And then, quite inappropriately for the United States, came the decision by the OPEC countries allied with Russia to cut oil production by two million barrels per day, so American gasoline prices rose and Joe Biden fell in the polls .
The US Department of Energy is forced to release an additional 10 million barrels from its oil reserves. Bubbles continue to form in stock markets, real estate and government debt markets, delaying deadlines for solving difficult problems.
It seems that the USA and the West in general will find it difficult to solve their economic problems as long as the war in Ukraine lasts.
Meanwhile, countries in Asia and the Arab world that cooperate with Russia expect good economic growth rates in 2022, Saudi Arabia at 7.5%, the United Arab Emirates at 5.4%, India at 6.2%, Iran 3.7%, surpassing the growth of the West.
On the day the EU announced the eighth package of anti-Russian sanctions, an interstate agreement was drawn up between Russia and the Islamic Republic of Iran, which, in particular, provides for the supply of millions of tons of Russian hydrocarbons to Iran without any ceiling restrictions.
An international North-South transport corridor is being developed through Iran and the Caspian Sea, connecting Russia with the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean countries. At the initiative of Russia, work has begun on the creation of a large natural gas hub in Turkey, which will make up for the volumes of natural gas exports lost as a result of the Nord Stream sabotage. Asia is uniting, while the Eurasian vision is receding and this is to the benefit of the USA.
The Russian economy, under the conditions of the most severe blockade by the “collective West”, has endured.
At the same time, Russia appears to be rebounding as energy export flows are redistributed away from ESAs, new markets for grain and fertilizer are being created, raw material processing is deepening, imports of a wide range of goods and technology are being replaced, and an essentially new peaceful nuclear reactor is being built based on in fast neutrons.
But with the consolidation of a cold war climate between the EU and Russia, in the long run Russia has more to lose than the EU.
The transformation of Turkey, for example, into an energy hub for transporting Russian natural gas to the EU, as the President of Russia recently announced, stumbles on the fact that the EU should want to get natural gas from there later.
This is extremely doubtful, since on the one hand the EU, admittedly in this energy year, is called upon to find and will find solutions in the medium term at least, while at the same time in the coming years it will turn more and more to “green energy”.
Consequently, it is doubtful whether the EU will need Russian natural gas, at least to the same extent and degree that it needs it today.
On the contrary, due to the war in Ukraine, the EU perceives Russia as a threat to itself, as a result of which it proceeded to upgrade the armament programs of its member countries and to increase its deterrent capacity, becoming increasingly independent from the USA, the which will turn to the Pacific.
