As anyone could have predicted, Russia has declared a Force Majeure, their Gazprom declared “extraordinary and extreme circumstances” to void itself from all contractual obligations to Germany. No heat for you Germans this winter, the Gazprom pipeline has been shut down because you side with Ukraine. Their excuse being that crucial turbines are being held up in Canada because of sanctions over Ukraine.
That may be just a start with more shutdowns to follow to other European nations, or it may just be meant to scare the hell out of everyone else who’s dependent on Russian gas to cook their food and heat their homes.
That this was inevitable was plain from the very start, when that pipeline was first run across Europe. OF COURSE the Russians would use dependence on that gas to bully and force their demands on anyone stupid enough to be dependent on their energy sources. Reasonable people would not expect this to happen when dealing with other reasonable people, but that’s where the stupidity comes in because Russians have never been reasonable. Clearly, Germans can be pretty stupid too.
You know, Russia only has about 145 million people in that huge country. That’s why they do everything they can to seem terrible and dangerous, it’s why they threaten to use A-Bombs and do crude stunts like this. Their military is so inept that they can’t even conquer a country the size of Texas, which is Ukraine, when they live right next door to it and don’t have to invade from afar. Russia’s capabilities actually suck dog dick and cutting off this energy supply to Germany is literally an Act Of War.
You can’t make treaties with other nations to build an energy conduit across their lands and agree to supply them all with that energy at agreed upon prices, and then, once their dependence on that energy is established, threaten to cut off that energy unless they meet demands that are detrimental to those nations. To do so is to invite retaliation.
Germany has been reluctant to contribute to Ukraine’s defense, but that isn’t stopping Russia from going after them first. It may actually be because Russia sees Germany as the weakest of the NATO allies who are dependent on their gas. Bullies do love to attack the weak.
Germany has a lot of coal fired power plants and huge reserves of open-pit coal and they’re already bringing those power plants back on line in response to the gas cutoff to provide electricity now and save their gas for winter heating. Because of their resources it’s unlikely that Germany would be interested in an actual military action against Russia, and Russia surely is counting on this, which makes me think that they won’t take this any farther.
Instead they’ll pound their chests and make loud threats to meet their demands, and hope their ploy to frighten Western Europe works. It will be interesting to see if anyone caves, because the whole reason that Gazprom pipeline exists is because of the Paris Climate Agreement to reduce carbon emissions. Signers to it shut down their coal-fired power plants, like France, which relies mostly on nuclear power now. But those nuclear plants are being shut down because of age problems and France really needs that Russian gas.
So will France cave to the Russian demands that we all know are coming or will Russia cut off France’s gas too? And a few other NATO nations? Or cut all the gas off completely to all of them? As stupidly as Putin is acting now, anything is possible. Stay tuned.