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Putin banked €1B last year from EU fuel buys despite ban
(www.politico.eu)
Wait, Putin specifically?
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Turkey and Bulgaria? Where is Hungary or don't they have refineries?
Not sure why Hungary was excluded. They're getting oil from Russia directly through the pipelines. Others probably ship them, so that's why they were excluded? Bulgaria gets it from Kazakhstan, Iraq and Tunisia. But the oil from Kazakhstan comes from Russian pipelines, I think.
So basically, all the financial warfare against Russia has failed.
Seems more like Europe is mostly hurting itself instead.
While this is still a big number, Russia's oil revenue both from the EU and in total has been massively reduced.
I think it's hard to argue reducing dependency on resources from a frequently hostile country is "harming themselves", especially since Russia has intentionally interrupted supply as leverage.
Yeah, I overstated my point, Russia hasn't been untouched by sanctions and trade war. That said? The Eurozone slipped into a recession in June and GDP growth been flat since then, I don't know why people are trying to argue that they haven't been hurt by this. The US has orchestrated a master stroke of geopolitics. It has been able to hurt its rivals in both Europe and Russia at the same time and tricked them both into doing it to themselves and thinking its in their own interests.
The Eurozone slipped in to recession because of COVID AND the war. Not only that: Ukraine was a big shadow player in the subcontractor field. Not only that: Most European countries are already out of their recession, only Germany is struggling right now and that's also mostly because as a country relying on export, it was hurt the most. However, the growth is still around the 0,2 in the plus, so no recession either.
woaw .2%
so growth
🤡
Better than shrinking - which would actually be a recession.
Surely you realize that near-zero growth isn't good, right? Or that it's a clear sign that Europe is still clearly being harmed?
And anyway, that still dodges my overall point - the US benefits from keeping its rivals weak.
Taking less from the environment would be better, not taking more - especially if the global population peaks and the population shrinks.
The idea of perpetual growth of finite resource extraction that many governments and corporations try to tell us is good is getting tired. How about we settle for a good enough standard of living, and work on making it more equally distributed and on recycling to reduce / eventually eliminate the extraction of non-renewable resources?
As terrible as Putin's invasion and occupation of Ukraine is, I think the decarbonisation and transition to renewable energy as a response to it is a very positive thing. The transition to higher percentages of renewables was always going to be painful, but it is one of those things where putting it off because it is perceived to be too hard only makes it harder in the future. Ideally, we should have gone much harder much earlier - we are already locked in for a lot of warming and habitat and arable land lost, but a push now is better than going even longer without solving the problem.
Direct trade has reduced, but Europe is still buying Russian energy through third parties. Russia is still making record profits, third parties are skimming off top, and European public is footing the bill. Pretty good deal for everyone but Europe is seems.
Russia's oil revenue both from the EU and in total has been massively reduced.
Not really. Although Russia revenue from the EU has been reduced significantly, they manage to open up a new market in the East that massively stabilise their gas overall revenues. Russia is nowadays redirecting its resources east and building news pipelines to meet the demand from the East e.g. China. They no longer care much about the EU market.
That was never the intention and totally unexpected outcome of the sanction. They never thought China, India and even Turkey will come to the rescue. To say EU are not affected is an understatement. The EU now has to depend on the higher price gas from the US, Germany had to abandon their green initiatives and go back to coal, and they even have to buy Russian gas at higher inflated price from middleman to circumvent their own sanction - do you really think they dont know they are actually buying Russian gas? Of course they know. But they have to because they will suffer more if they don't.
How is Europe hurting itself by accelerating green projects and self sufficiency?
Putin making a Billion by selling way under what he would like and having to bend over to keep the Middle Eastern suppliers happy and having to find workarounds is not where he'd like to be, meanwhile my European electricity just got ~20% reduction.
Are they? Or are they just switching to LNG?
I guess we'll see how inflation is in the next year. It's cooled, but remember all that inflation is now baked into the system. Prices don't actually go down when inflation does.
This so completely irrelevant to what you said and I just told my prices are going down significantly.
Are your food prices going down? Your rent?
These things are connected.
Yes, my mortgage rates have stopped rising and groceries are expensive but have stopped increasing for the most part.
Do tell me how you relate this to a Russian success and European failure? Or are you just throwing around noteworthy hot topics in the hope it will make your original assertion less stupid?
"Stopped rising" is not "gone down", which only means unaffordable prices are going to stay unaffordable instead of becoming more unaffordable.
Also I never claimed anything about Russian success. This is American success. America has successfully crippled two geopolitical and economic rivals. Europe is now reliant on the US for gas after the pipeline was destroyed (gee I wonder who did that!)
Although now Russia has started to recover from the sanctions regime it is just accelerating dedollarization lol
You claimed the sanctions we're a failure implying a Russian success. That's wrong, they've completely overhauled their economy, fucked their population and lost skilled professionals.
Europe has only hurt itself was the other assertion but given the unity among members against the war I'd argue the opposite. It also convinced other nations to join NATO which is a complete failure for Russia.
My grocery bills have gone down and I don't know what to tell you regarding rent, my mortgage is fine.
Seems like the main goal was to just convince the public that Europe is no longer dependent on Russia for energy. In that sense they succeeded, since a lot of Europeans now believe this.
Except it clearly hasn't. Why are you manipulating public discussion in favor of a dictatorship?
Uh huh. Hey I'm a factory owner and I'm looking for some fresh steel, do you know a good place in the UK where I can find some?
...oh, I see. Well hey, at least the basic functions of a society haven't been impacted. At least everyone can afford housing and heating over the winter, right? At least there's not like, widespread hunger, right? After all, if things like that happened somewhere evil like Russia, that's the kind of thing we would use to declare them a failed state in need of responsible guidance.
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How are you defining success?
I’d call Russia growing at around 3.5% and booking record revenues a pretty bad outcome, from the perspective of people who think these sanctions are doing anything much at all.
I have a bridge I want to sell you
You’re saying you think the figures are false?
Have you looked into them at all or is it just more comfortable to assume that?
Asserting so does not make it so. The Eurozone is in recession and growth is flat, meanwhile Russia is still growing. Russia is coming out ahead of this sanctions/trade war with Europe.
That said? The US is the real winner here. It gets to hurt Russia and Europe and the same time and make them think it was their idea! Meanwhile, people just assume anyone who doesn't say Russia is going to collapse any day now is working for Putin. 🤡
Russia is still growing
You mean like how the Soviet Ruble was worth hundreds of dollars, yet the USSR had to pay for western goods with old battleships? Oh, the irony - "Asserting so does not make it so."
I mean like how the IMF said their economy grew over 5% last quarter.
this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2024
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