zlacker

>>hungle+(OP)
Gazprom, Russian gas monopoly, has on Kremlin’s orders first threatened to, and then suspended gas supplies to Europe in an attempt to blackmail it to stop supporting Ukraine under a threat of, as they put it, “freezing Europe”. In the process unilaterally breaking existing delivery contracts. There were no Western sanctions targeting Russian gas - it was entirely a political operation initiated by Russian government, “weaponizing energy supplies” as it often referred to, in the course of hybrid war.

Kremlin has miscalculated - Europe was able to largely avoid the intended crisis, while simultaneously Gazprom lost its largest market. The pivot from Russian supplies did come at a significant cost though.

Now that the Western sanctions are strangling Russian economy - if Gazprom wanted to come back to European market - they would be first greeted by billions of dollars of contract charges in arbitration courts.

It has long became obvious that Gazprom will likely attempt to use claims of force majeure to try to avoid financial penalties. And as it became customary for Russia - start preparing fertile ground in the courts of public opinion by planting various stories misdirecting the blame and muddying the waters.

>>Vincen+lA1
Russia is a brutal dictatorship engaging in a war of aggression against the Ukraine and using natural gas as weapon in it's war.

But is that a reason to not to address or even mention the topic of the post, the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline? I mean, are implicitly saying that covert act was justified? If people believe that, they should say it.

One of the worst effects of war is an attitude of "not only is everything our side does automatically justified, we're going to stomp on any investigation of what our side does".

>>joe_th+2Z1
This almost sounds like you are suggesting that people look at the situation, the motivation and context, to judge the possible consequences and see the reasoning behind those actions. That despite the bad optics of a situation, they can look at the larger picture and consider the unfortunate, grim reality of war. That they are aware of their own blindspots, missing information, lack of understanding of geo politics and judge their own possible ignorance carefully and introspective... before coming up with an opinion on military aid to ukraine.

But no that can't be it, that would be complete insanity.