Avoiding Sanctions and Boycotts with a Little Help from Your Friends, It’s Gas

Avoiding Sanctions and Boycotts with a Little Help from Your Friends, It’s Gas

Putin is Hardly Alone

Yes, Western sanctions have had an impact, but not remotely to a level that has shifted policy. Further, Russia has a tradition of accepting suffering on behalf of the motherland that dates back over centuries. In WWII, Russia (technically the entire Soviet Union) amassed 70% of the casualties in the European theater. Despite exceptionally brief years of attempted democracy after the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has never had a sustainable era of political democracy. Repeatedly, after centuries of repressive monarchs and a brutal communist regime, Russia has veered towards autocratic strongmen. The political system may have a plethora of political parties represented in her legislature (the Duma), but they each worship Putin in their own way.

Putin is wildly popular among fellow autocrats, many cheering him on in his effort to reunite and reconfigure Russia’s hegemony over the former Soviet territories, fractured into the CIS grouping. As the Baltic States, who despise that autocracy, have even joined NATO, Putin’s wrath has only escalated. One of Putin’s biggest fans, one who would love to mirror Putin’s control of everything, is Donald Trump. But unlike the easily manipulation of Trump and his narcissism, Vladimir Putin was schooled in manipulation, oppression and brutality under the expert aegis of the Soviet era KGB police/spy system. He rose to the rank of colonel in that murderous organization. Trump has always been mere putty in Putin’s world, a wannabe dictator easily controlled.

Russia has been accused of crass corruption in its efforts to control as many CIS countries as it can. Georgia and Belarus are prime examples where military force was applied when mere corruption failed. The war with Ukraine is merely an extreme example. The recent election in Moldova, a small CIS nation that borders Ukraine, is an example where Russian cash aimed at buying votes, plus strong messages of intimidation, failed by a hair’s breadth to stop the election of a pro-European Union administration. Is Moldova next for a Russian incursion?

Is Russia’s economy sinking her into oblivion? Writing for the October 20th Time Magazine, Suriya Jayanti provides his harsh reality check: “The U.S., U.K., and E.U. have enacted economic measures to punish the Kremlin. Over 2022 and 2023, Western powers fully or partially banned all imports of Russian crude oil by tanker, oil products, coal, pipeline gas, some liquified natural gas (LNG), and more, and eventually many of the financial mechanisms and technologies necessary to process trade transactions.

“These measures were not imposed all at once because the E.U. couldn’t survive a sudden and absolute cut off of its energy supply from Russia. LNG has remained mostly unrestricted, as have nuclear power resources. For oil, instead of banning it outright, the White House led an effort to impose a $60 a barrel price cap on Russian crude to limit Putin’s profits without overly constricting global supply in a way that could increase inflation. Natural gas pipeline exports dried up, with a trickle still passing through Ukraine and up to 38 billion cubic meters per year going to China. But overall, fossil fuel imports from Russia to Europe dropped from €16 to €1 billion a month—from 2022 to 2023, Russian oil and gas revenues dropped by nearly a quarter.

“But that’s where Western sanctions stopped working. In 2024, Russia is having a bumper year. Its GDP growth is on track to be above 4%, unemployment is at a record low, and military recruitment and soldiers’ salaries have in turn bolstered record wage growth. Much of this is because the Kremlin is pumping money into military-industrial sectors to support its war effort in Ukraine—40% of public spending is now on defense and security. But domestic war spending is only half the story.

“The other half is that the world has given up on giving up Russian energy. The embargoes on Russian energy products are not much more than sanctions theater. Austria is the most flagrant example, with Russian gas still accounting for the vast majority of its energy imports. But even where pipeline gas imports to the E.U. have stopped, the more expensive Russian LNG was never banned so its purchase has increased by almost 20%—leaving Russia as the second biggest seller of gas to the continent, and guaranteeing the Kremlin higher profits. Meanwhile, so-called ‘shadow fleet’ oil tankers carrying Russian oil have been pulling directly into European ports for several months, according to Greenpeace, in violation of Western sanctions. In total, the E.U. has paid Russia over €196 billion for oil, gas, and coal since February 2022, money that has kept the Kremlin flush—Russia has even managed to rebuild its military.

“These sanctions failures have also led to diminished global influence for the U.S. Turkey has developed considerable leverage as an energy middleman, and NATO member, which it is using to stymie both U.S. and E.U. foreign policy goals. Meanwhile, President Biden’s careful unwillingness to let Ukraine seize a military advantage for fear of ‘escalation’ has reenforced the impression that its support is far from absolute. China is likely factoring this into its calculations on Taiwan, as is Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, as he continues to expand Israel’s war across the Middle East.”

Sino-Russian ties have never been stronger. They’ve conspired to create a workaround financial trade network that sidesteps the main US-dominated SWIFT system. Combined Russian and Chinese fleets are jointly vying for domination of the Arctic seas, even the Northwest Passage. Russian support of Iran, now resulting in Iranian arms being sent to Russia, has skewered American influence in the region. Iran has successfully deployed her terrorist surrogates to isolate Israel from her potential alliances with many Arab nations. North Korea is even sending troops to fight against Ukraine. As Simone McCarty (CNN, October 20th) points out, Russian global power is rising again: “Nearly three years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine saw Moscow condemned by countries globally, leader Vladimir Putin is staging a summit with more than a dozen world leaders – in a pointed signal from the autocrat that far from being alone, an emerging coalition of countries stands behind him.

“The three-day BRICS [a grouping emerging economies] summit, [started October 22nd] in the southwestern Russian city of Kazan… is the first meeting of the group of major emerging economies Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa since it expanded earlier this year to include Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, and Iran. Leaders [attending] include China’s Xi Jinping, India’s Narendra Modi, Iran’s Masoud Pezeshkian, South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa as well as those from outside the club, like Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was expected to join but canceled his trip after suffering an injury at home.

“Set to be by far the largest international gathering the Russian president has hosted since the start of the war in February 2022, the gathering of BRICS and other countries this week spotlights a growing convergence of nations who hope to see a shift in the global balance of power and – in the case of some, like Moscow, Beijing and Tehran – directly counter the United States-led West… It’s this latter message that Putin – and close partner and most powerful BRICS country leader Xi – [projected]: it’s the West that stands isolated in the world with its sanctions and alliances, while a ‘global majority’ of countries support their bid to challenge American global leadership.” Putin’s handiwork, combined with China’s huge global stature (despite her own economic woes), has redefined the major schism in global politics: the United States and her allies vs the new Sino-Russian political bloc.

I’m Peter Dekom, and not since WWII has the United States needed her traditional allies more in this clear Sino-Russian effort to emasculate American power and leave us isolated in a world with so many forces aimed at taking us down, politically and economically.