Twitter is of diminishing returns these days as it increasingly censors anyone interesting or informative. Still, though, there are occasional glimmers of intelligence. One might usually be hesitant about taking economic insight from a mere Twitter account named “Professional hog groomer”, but the argument seems to stand in its own merit.

Russia announced today that starting immediately, they will begin selling natural gas to ‘unfriendly countries’ in Roubles. This is a far bigger development than is being reported. Russia currently supplies about 40% of Europe’s natural gas, which is used to heat homes and power their grid. Current EU sanctions against Russia have conveniently excluded gas for this reason. 

There is no way for Europe to cut off such a significant portion of their own gas supply and not cause complete chaos. Even if the US and other countries swoop in to frantically try and make up the shortfall, the infrastructure to switch to LNG isn’t yet built. The EU could maybe limp their way through the rest of this cold season, but by next fall they’ll be unable to heat their homes or power their grid. So they need Russian gas for the foreseeable future. But given that the EU’s sanctions place them firmly within the ‘unfriendly’ camp, they are now faced with needing to procure Roubles to be able to purchase Russian gas. But how do they procure Roubles? The EU have 4 options:

1. exchange gold for Roubles with Russia.
2. sell goods to Russia.
3. exchange Euros for Roubles on forex market
4. buy Roubles from Russia’s central bank with Euros/USD. 

But there are consequences…

1. gold is sanction proof.
2. is impossible without lifting sanctions.
3. will cause the Ruble to appreciate against the €, something the US is vehemently fighting against.
4. Russia may not accept USD/€ given the ways their holdings could (and would) be weaponized against them. 

If 4 occurs, this will force unfriendly countries to first purchase an intermediary currency, like the Yuan. The prospect of being forced into purchasing Yuan is something the west has been anticipating but has little defence against. And this is the reason behind the recent barely veiled threats and gunboat style diplomacy from the US toward China for helping Russia skirt their unilateral sanctions.

This bifurcation of the world into “with us or against us” is setting the stage for renewed sanctions on China. The resulting prices on not just gas, but on all imported commodities in the EU are set to skyrocket. This is going to cause massive instability, which the US eagerly hopes to exploit. Thus, we see that this entire conflict is arguably less about the west isolating Russia and more about cleaving a receding Europe off of Asia and forcing it back into dependency on the US. 

The EU now has a choice to make: if they continue down the path of subordinating to US aggression against Russia, Europe will be plunged into chaos. But if they break from the US, they have a chance at a soft landing. So far, they seem to be veering decisively toward the former. 

We would venture that this is a disaster of the EU’s own making. Nobody forced Germany to unplug its nuclear power stations or shut down coal. The EU of its own volition elected to shut down its own energy infrastructure, pivoting to renewables which necessarily requires gas backup. They knew it would increase reliance of Russian gas but this did not in any way deter them. The green agenda has done this to Europe, not Putin.



Now that it has made itself dependent on Russia, there are considerable limits to EU leverage, to the point where the EU is essentially financing Putin’s war on Ukraine. It can push harder on sanctions but if that leads to price rises of all commodities then the great EV revolution is dead in the water, as is grid scale battery storage – without which wind turbines are next to useless.

This seems to be echoed by a report in The Telegraph, Rising energy costs affect the manufacture of EVs, and the cost of charging them. Raw material costs and chronic shortages of parts mean the forecourt prices are set to be astronomical while supply crunches will seriously impact the government’s intention to level up by building gigafactories.

Ultimately Europe cannot wage tis economic war on Russia and still transition to Net Zero. This somewhat torpedoes Boris Johnson’s “energy independence plan”. Europe is either on the hook to Russia for gas or on the hook to Communist China for rare earth minerals, microchips and metals. This tends to suggest that sanctions against Russia are an act of self-harm – that will be a hammer blow to the European economy (from which we are not separate, despite Brexit).

This is where the virtue signalling elites need to ask themselves a few hard questions. Are they really willing to plunge all of Europe into poverty and chaos, perhaps even leading to the breakup of their beloved EU just to prop up Biden’s puppet regime in Ukraine and to save a scrap of Russian speaking rust belt? How much love for their Zelensky crook do they really have?

The national, nay continental, interest is for this war to end, and if Europe can’t unplug from Russian gas, then it has to press for a ceasefire. Instead, Europe’s foolish leaders are still flooding Ukraine with weapons (that will fall into the hands of terrorists) and further antagonise Putin. His forces may be losing the ground offensive, but he can still flatten Ukraine, bring Europe to its knees, and initiate another wave of mass migration from Africa by cutting off grain supplies.

Militarily, Russia is weak, and Putin couldn’t blitzkrieg across Europe even if he wanted to. There is no wider risk to NATO countries unless Putin is further provoked. But Putin does have considerable leverage and is willing to inflict suffering on his own people in order to hurt the West. By responding in kind with sanctions and military aid, our own rulers are set to inflict massive economic pain on us.

Ultimately, the Europe’s ham-fisted approach to Russia and Ukraine is acting in support of American corporate agendas and the Biden oligarchy. We are entitled to ask what’s in it for us? It’s not even as though we are coming to the rescue of a Western style liberal democracy. Ukraine is nothing of the sort, and and Zelensky is as much of a criminal as Putin. Corruption is endemic to the culture.

In this, the USA is not a good actor, and the EU’s embrace of Russophobic foreign policy is the strategic blunder of the century. The relative power of the Europe stems from its wealth and buying power, but by crippling our own economies with sanctions and the idiotic Net Zero agenda, we are making an irrelevance of ourselves and shifting the balance of power towards our enemies: China, Russia, India and Pakistan. We couldn’t be making a bigger mess if we were trying.