This is something that has been bothering me from the start of the so called SMO. Europe relied on gas flowing through Ukraine pipelines. Couldn’t Russia just have stopped the flow, and forgone the war?
This is going to shock some people, but Putin is not a mass murderer.
Unlike NATO which destroyed every critical infrastructure (energy, water etc.) during the invasion of Iraq and Libya and condemned millions to death and destruction, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has shown magnitudes of order of restraint, repeatedly, even to the detriment of its own military campaign (of course, there is also a propaganda component at play here).
In fact, Russia only steps up its strikes on energy infrastructure as responses in kind, when their opponents first had initiated a provocation. This also happens on the economic front, where their sanctions on gas delivery was made in response to the Europeans violating the contractual agreements first. This is why you’d never see a lawsuit against Russia turning off the gas flow where the court ruling favors the European party.
Russia wants to punish NATO, but not the European people, just like it wants to punish the Banderite Nazis, not the Ukrainian people.
Collapsing Europe also wouldn’t end the war, it would create a chaotic and disastrous political situation right next to its border in ways that nobody could predict (nobody wants to plunge the world into another world war again).
Remember, Putin is a soft-hearted lib and has demonstrated this trait again and again, over decades. The US wants Russia to be the bad guy so they can probably justify nuking Russia or something, but Putin is not that person.
Unlike NATO which destroyed every critical infrastructure (energy, water etc.) during the invasion of Iraq and Libya and condemned millions to death and destruction, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has shown magnitudes of order of restraint, repeatedly, even to the detriment of its own military campaign (of course, there is also a propaganda component at play here).
Well he is planning to make many Ukrainians into new Russian citizens and also permanently hold the lands, it would be counterproductive to treat Ukraine too harshly. The kinder Russia is, the easier it is for Ukrainians to return their self-identification back into a pro-Russian cultural context, similar things apply to the ROC and PRC. The westerners never planned that for those countries. Burn it all down and seize everything they got, that was the mission. Libya and Iraq got invaded because they were too sovereign, too powerful, too noisy.
Why would Russia sanction themselves? Their economy relies on the sale of hydrocarbons like oil and natural gas.
First, it would devastate the Russian economy to actually stop the flow of oil/gas by all means into Europe.
Second, it seems to me like this would be a potential trigger for WW III. Literally turning the lights out for the entire continent of Europe would have to be met by an insane reaction by Europe and the USA.
I wonder about this too, but in conjunction with other things that Ukraine was historically reliant on Russia for.
This was a tactic they used a few times in the 2000s and 2010s. I don’t remember if it happened post-2014. Perhaps it didn’t end up having the desired effect in the long term. At any rate, the moderate-level conflict almost certainly involved the Ukrainians bracing themselves for this contingency.
I mean, if cutting Ukraine off of Russian petroleum and natural gas was enough to stop the war, they wouldn’t have blown up the Nordstream pipeline
yeah the US wants the war, and blew up the pipeline so i don’t think turning off the tap would’ve done it.
Why would that have stopped the war? Europe is still buying Russian oil through intermediaries despite more than a dozen rounds of sanctions.
No gas through Ukraine, no money for them either
No gas through Nordstream and Russia is still getting money from Europe for Russian gas. The point I am making is that cutting Russian gas delivery off from Europe has already been done and all it means is Europe pays even higher prices for Russian gas because they’re still buying it through middlemen. Cutting off direct petroleum supply to Europe has not and would not stop the war, that is exactly why the USA blew up Nordstream and forced Europe to sanction Russian petroleum.
As Europe is finding out, you can’t win a war by fucking your own economy voluntarily.
