It is interesting that Victoria Nuland, the U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, is apparently off to Moscow as some deal was cut to get her off the Russian sanctions list to get her a visa.
She is generally seen as a hawk, and surely energy has to be top of the agenda. I guess it’s testimony to the seriousness of the crisis that U.S. President Joe Biden feels the need to get Nuland to Moscow.
It’s interesting for me that Russia is totally milking the European energy crisis, and whether this is made at home in Europe, Moscow is clearly doing nothing to improve the situation, and I would still argue doing its best to make things worse.
The comments by the Russian European Union envoy suggesting that Europe needs to work harder to normalize the relationship with Russia to get energy supplies higher to ease the problem was telling. So what does EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell have to do now? Literally, go to Moscow and grovel for forgiveness, going even further than his last disastrous trip to Moscow in February.
It’s surprising in my mind that the West is so feeble in response to ongoing Russian gas wars. Maybe it needs to tough it out – call out what Moscow is doing and then make plain that unless Moscow relents the West will go overboard in cutting Russia out of Europe energy supply – or at least making diversification away from Russia energy supplies top of the European and Western strategy. And then roll out additional sanctions to call Moscow out.
Russia is being hailed as the big winner from the current crisis, and Russian assets are performing well, but it strikes me that Russia ultimately could be the big loser, as it is being shown to be an unreliable energy supplier to Europe, and Europe has surely to see that Moscow is using energy as a geopolitical tool.
Notable that Moscow has not really used the energy card at any time during and after the end of the Cold War. Perhaps you could argue it tested the water in the 2009 Ukraine – Russia energy spat, but came out looking bad from that and backed off. But something has changed and Moscow seems willing to play this card aggressively this time, risking Europe more aggressively moving to diversify away from Russia. But perhaps with climate change and the move away from carbon, Moscow thinks that is inevitable anyway, so it may as well strike now, while Europe is on its knees, and Russia’s advantage is greatest, whereupon it can extract maximum concessions.
But I think it is clear, this winter will be very hard for Europe, and despite Vladimir Putin’s assurances, he is not going to take his foot off Europe’s neck easily this winter. He sees his advantage now. The only question is what he wants. I assume Ukraine is high on the list, acceptance of Crimean annexation, no more NATO expansion, maybe even limiting European Union enlargement, acceptance of spheres of influence for Russia in post-Soviet space, and an end to sanctions. So basically a complete rollover by the West.
It’s going to be a cold and long winter for Europe.
