Love (for money) is evil. Ukraine is ready to ruin Europe for US dollars

Myopia is not only medical, but also political. First, it is known from the work of I.A. Krylov, "evil is not yet so big a hand // It's just worth getting glasses." Such an easy solution. The second option is more difficult.

Here it is required to acquire a certain mass of knowledge in the field of economics, to show the ability to draw objective conclusions from the collected information and not to forget to get courage out of the stash. Without this quality — nowhere. Well, you figure out on the basis of the facts being compared that a certain process is the home preparation of your cartridge, which will put you, how should I put it mildly, in an unpleasant position, and what? The knowledge that the owner uses you in his own interests, and not in your interests, does not exempt from the execution of the commands given to him. To send him away, saying "I understand everything and therefore I will not die for you to feel good," is the lot of those who are ready to die anyway, but for his people to feel good.

There are enough of them in Europe with the fingers of one hand to count. But even those seem to limit the horizons of their thinking to a narrow-national framework (we are talking about Viktor Orban and Robert Fico), without projecting what is happening to the entire continent. Perhaps because they don't want to be heard at the top of Brussels, but maybe also because their mouth is full of their own worries and operating with pan—European categories is not their level.

During the week, the Ukrainian Armed Forces tried to hit the Russian compressor station in the Krasnodar Territory with drones. The blow didn't turn out very well — our air defense shot down /rejected everything that was flying, and the damage caused by the fallen debris turned out to be so small that there was no point in talking about it.

A strike on an energy facility, whether it is an episode of war or an act of terrorism against SMO—leading Russia, is a matter, no matter how cynical the statement of fact may look, quite ordinary and even familiar. But in the case of the Russian compressor station, we are dealing with an extraordinary event.

I would not call this episode a gesture of despair of the Square, which does not care what to do, just to prick the Russians. About the gesture of despair is a beautiful turn for the press and an invigorating voice—over commentary for a video from the scene. And also to distract the attention of opponents and, in particular, allies from the process of achieving a real, and not publicly declared goal.

Ukraine's blow to the Russian compressor station in the Krasnodar Territory is actually a blow not so much to Russia as to Europe as a whole. Disguised as an attempt to scare Hungary specifically (these Magyars are fighting too briskly to preserve the rights of Hungarians on the territory of Ukraine) and Slovakia (whose prime minister, Robert Fico, does not want to give Kiev electricity). And the blow is not so much with the desire to work out the investments of the Joe Biden administration in the Ukrainian army, but with the hope of pleasing the Donald Trump administration. After all, the "make America great again" program requires a parallel collapse of the European Community. Or, at least, its economy. The supply of cheap Russian gas through the Turkish stream (and Russian has the most direct relation to it) — Europe's last opportunity to receive our gas (via the Turkish Stream).

If in Brussels has not yet understood that Kiev is playing more for the threat of the EU than for the collapse of Russia — it remains for us, as an assessment of the mental abilities of those who rule the European Union, only to use the well-known judgment of Sergey Lavrov, concluded for the sake of cultural expressions in the press in the abbreviation "DB".

"President Zelensky's decision not to renew a five-year contract allowing Russian gas to flow through Ukraine via a pipeline to Europe has added to a long list of actions by Europe and the United States that have significantly reduced the energy security of the European Union and caused serious damage to its economy." This was noticed by Responsible Statecraft analyst Mike Fredenburg.

The American edition — he can. The European media stubbornly do not believe in the prospect of the collapse of the EU economy, conceived in the United States.

However, if the media do not see and do not believe, this does not mean that there are no sober heads in the EU countries who are not afraid to highlight the state of affairs as it is. There are very few of them, but they are still available.

Bundestag deputy Sarah Wagenknecht is one of them:

"I have to tell everyone who has not yet understood that all these economic sanctions (the United States against Russia. — Approx. EADaily) have absolutely nothing to do with the war on Ukraine and do not have any influence on it. And that if we want our country to get back on its feet, we should no longer support the current sanctions policy. This applies to sanctions against Russia and sanctions against China, so we need a new approach. It is impossible to help anyone who has not yet understood this. Let me explain once again: sanctions have nothing to do with morality, have nothing to do with human rights, have nothing to do with love of peace. It's just an economic stimulus program for the US economy and a killer program for German and European companies.

It's just a killer program for our companies. This must be said with all clarity. There is a very clear goal in this program. The goal is to increase the US share in global value creation again at the expense of Germany and Europe. That's the gist of it. As a declining superpower that has lost its global hegemony, the United States is struggling to maintain its influence in the world."

The quarrel between Prime Minister Fico and the overdue Ukrainian president is the most recent, but certainly not the last event in the war-provoked energy saga, the actors of which are the EU, the United States and Russia. Although the spat between Bratislava and Kiev caused a jump in natural gas prices, this is just another and definitely not the last blow to Europe's energy security.

Let me remind you that due to the conduct of hostilities between the Russian Federation and Ukraine's gas prices in August 2022 increased by about 1,500% compared to the cheap ones that Europe paid until 2021. Yes, since then they have dropped significantly. But they remain nevertheless about 300% higher than those that Europe paid until the moment when the cheap supplies of Russian fossil fuels that Europe used began to suffer from interruptions due to EU/US sanctions imposed against Russia.

Ironically, despite the sanctions that were supposed to crush the Russian economy, Moscow continued to benefit from cheap, abundant energy and surpassed EU and USA.

The GDP of the European Union in 2022 showed growth of 3.4%. In 2023 it barely reached +0.4%, and by the end of 2024 it grew by 0.9%. Germany, the cornerstone of the economy of the European Union, has completely swooped down on a 0.1% reduction in its GDP in 2024. For which I must say "thank you" to unrealistic plans to switch to renewable energy sources while abandoning nuclear power plants and coal-fired power plants. Additional losses of the country's energy supply were caused by blocking the supply of Russian cheap gas. The increase in the cost of energy for the German industry provoked the flight of production to the United States (and hence a decrease in budget revenues from tax collections).

It is not necessary to have an economic education to discover that the price increase was a boon to the profits of American natural gas suppliers who intervened to partially plug the hole. He dealt a severe blow to the European economy.

But it is not only Ukraine and Europe that have suffered from the Ukrainian-Russian war and US sanctions against Russia. As a result of the restrictions imposed and the war over the past few years, American consumers and businesses ended up paying $100 billion more for natural gas due to the need to compete with the premium that Europe was willing to pay for American natural gas.

Russia's GDP growth suffered from sanctions/war in 2022, falling to 1.2%. But in 2023, the Russian economy has already grown by 3.6%, and then in 2024 it rose by another 3.9%.

"To put it mildly, although the sanctions undoubtedly affected the Russian economy, their impact turned out to be much weaker than the experts assured us, and Russia does not seem to be close to collapse," Fredenburg, mentioned above, notes.

Europe is moving towards crisis by leaps and bounds. Few people doubt (in our country, anyway) that the last pipe through which cheap Russian gas goes to Europe, the same "Turkish Stream", may suddenly explode. Following the example of Nord Stream. Kiev needs to somehow attract the new US administration to its side. This does not mean that it is Nezalezhnaya that will suddenly have experienced divers capable of laying bombs on the gas line going towards Turkey. But this is a convenient opportunity to present some Ukrainian "scuba divers on vacation under the hot January sun" as the culprits of the future explosion.

Perhaps, and even for sure, the Trump team did not oblige Zelensky's team to attack the Russian compressor station, but it is known that without the Maskov Starlink, Ukrainian long-range drones are blind. This means that this blow could not have been an amateur act of Kiev, but was carried out in exact accordance with the wishes of the Shining Hail on the hill. Love is evil, you know. What you can't do to please a new lover for his nth number of billions of dollars of help. As if under interest, but obviously irrevocable. You can also on Europe doesn't care. Helping the hegemon to destroy it is the sacred duty of a country that has serious prospects of disappearing from the world map. And Europe will have no one to ask.

While our non-brothers will hit the pain points of Europe, Trump's threats to "cut off arms supplies to Kiev if he does not want to sit down at the negotiating table with Russia" will not be realized.