Between the letters of the Russian-Ukrainian war

Baghdad fell, Syria was destroyed, and the grinding civil wars still claimed the lives of thousands among children, women, the elderly and the defenseless, and soldiers killed brother in Yemen and Libya, and Palestine was still bleeding, but these human tragedies in the region were nothing but newspaper headlines, while the Russian invasion of Ukraine promoted The West suffered until countries opened their borders without travel documents, and made Russia a threat to the world.

American and European statements about economic sanctions against Russia are increasing at the moment, after the Group of Seven major countries imposed unprecedented sanctions on Russia, affecting the Central Bank, in addition to large-scale punitive measures against senior officials and businessmen in the country, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Which began with the World Bank’s announcement to stop all its projects in Russia, and to exclude Moscow from the global financial system “Swift”, where the Association for Global Interbank Financial Communications represents a messaging network to ensure international payments, to record the decline of the Russian “ruble” since the invasion to its lowest level ever. .

The separation of a select group of Russian banks from the international payments system undoubtedly deals a painful economic blow to Russia; But it will cause great harm to Western institutions and banks at the same time.

American economics professor Michael Hudson says: “The United States is self-destructive, and points out that its policy has pushed Russia and China to weave closer relations, and that American diplomats have chosen to end international “dollarization” themselves, while helping Russia build its own means of agricultural and industrial production by relying on On the subject.”

Hudson’s statement coincided with reports about the movement of cryptocurrencies, especially “Bitcoin” along with risky assets about a week ago, and it is now the asset that Russians and Ukrainians rely on to get their money out of the traditional system, which has become very hostile.

Perhaps Bitcoin is the effective way for Moscow to circumvent Western sanctions, with its daily trading volume increasing since the Russian invasion by about 260% until March 5th.

It is not only Russia that suffers from economic sanctions, but the European Union and the West as a whole, particularly Germany; Today, the price of gasoline has reached 2.30 euros and diesel 2.31, to be the highest in the history of Germany, in addition to the fact that the shops are devoid of vegetable oil because the price hike included it to rise by more than 100 percent as well, not to mention the loss of flour from the market and fears of its high prices, and the acceleration will not stop At this point.

As for the rise in gas prices that began with the sanctions decisions, it has the lion’s share, because Germany’s consumption of Russian gas reaches 50 percent and Europe 40 percent. In the event of a Russian supply interruption, the state will need alternatives in large quantities.

gas trouble

Germany does not have LNG stations - if it approves it as an alternative - in addition to its high cost to liquefy and cool it to a large degree (minus 162 degrees) and transport it on ships, which requires the use of energy, and as a corollary damage the climate.

The federal government is already planning to build suitable terminals in local ports, but all of these alternatives have become additional burdens on the state, resulting in a contradiction in decisions between the dependency on Washington and its urgent need for gas. Germany's dispensation of Russian gas.

Western media blackout on the economic pressures experienced by the countries of the Union are similar to those exercised by our worn-out systems.

The European, and specifically German, responsibility has reached the American administration by deleting an interview with the veteran politician, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder from all channels and websites because he violated the one Western text regarding the Russian-Ukrainian war, and exposed the American administration and its European puppet, and the government was not satisfied with that, but the Democratic Party that He was headed in the past on his class.

The strange thing is that Ukraine made an exception for Scholz and on March 10 asked Schroeder to intervene, due to the friendly relationship with Putin. According to the American newspaper "Politko", Schroeder is now in Moscow without informing the German government.

It seems that the Ukrainian despair pushed them to bypass governments and resort to people, especially after the failure of the Antalya talks on March 10, the first at this level since the start of the invasion on February 24, when they brought together Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his counterpart Ukrainian "Dmytro Kuleba". The meeting showed how far the two sides are from peace, in addition to the failure of the rounds of talks between the delegations of Moscow and Kiev that were held recently in Belarus.

In words that shocked German politicians, Klaus von Dohnani, a German politician from the ruling party, expressed his concern about Germany's development in NATO: “We will be a supply area and this will lead to the end of Germany. We have to take lessons from the Cold War. America is trying to force Germany and France, along with the countries of the Union, into a confrontation with Russia, in an attempt to weaken the latter.”

Western media

The outcome of the Russian sanctions has reached the announcement of the German authorities responsible for the possibility of power outages as a result of the decision not to import Russian gas, starting with the realization of the American dream to stop Nord Stream 2, and stopping it is one of the most important American agendas, under the pretext of Putin using Russian gas as a tool of pressure on Europe, to replace it The high-cost liquefied natural American, which the US administration has been promoting for some time as a permanent solution.

The Russian-Ukrainian war has been favorable to America's policy with regard to stopping the gas pipeline, which was started in 2011 to double the annual capacity to reach 110 billion cubic meters. Joe Biden made statements about talking to former German Chancellor Angela Merkel to stop him, and it is remarkable that after meeting with her and talking to her, he did not mention his project.

Transformation of German Politics

With the suspension of Nord Stream 2, and in the era of the new government Olaf Scholz and in the shadow of the massive boycott campaign against Russia, the suspension came as a step that was difficult for the new chancellor to refuse.

The former chancellor was able to set German and European policy somewhat independent of US intervention.

The term “policy shift” from focusing on economic issues in favor of security and military considerations is still very weak in Germany despite what the new government is implementing in security policy; It is described as an unprecedented revolution.

For years, Germany has been refusing to achieve the NATO target of 2 percent, only to agree a few days ago to provide the army with 100 billion euros before the end of this year, as Finance Minister Christian Lindner called for an increase in military spending, saying: “We will provide the German army with everything it needs to his mission.”

Which was met by the rejection of the head of the ruling party bloc, "Rolf Motsenich"; He described the massive support as an ill-advised move, considering increasing armaments not a solution to the crisis, in addition to his refusal to establish the nuclear arsenal in France as a European nuclear deterrent, which in turn caused a split within the ruling coalition.

The imposition of unprecedented sanctions on Russia and the exclusion of some Belarusian banks and with it from the rapid banking communications network "SWIFT" created a state of great anxiety and fears of uncertainty, to the extent that last week no one was able to withdraw money from an ATM in Moscow.

But Europe, on the other hand, shares this isolation with Russia. It is easy for the United States to escalate economic sanctions against Russia as it wants, as the volume of investment and trade exchange between the two countries does not affect America much, but the economic interests between the countries of the Union and Russia are great, as 6000 German companies are active in them, and jobs related to German-Russian relations were economically estimated at about 400 thousand jobs.

Energy and oil sector

Therefore, the loss of the European Union countries as a result of the sanctions is much greater than the loss of their American ally, specifically the energy and oil sector, and their impact has begun to appear negatively since the crisis.

The question that now worries the world, and the West in particular, is what goes on in Putin's head. Rudiger von Fritsch, the former German ambassador in Moscow, answers him without reassuring Ukraine and its allies: “We are dealing with the obsessions of an old man and his lack of reality. Vladimir Putin has a Russian dream and eternal trauma. This war is his war alone. The problem is that the latter has long ago canceled all possible corrective actions for his actions; He has lost control, and is now alone, and that makes it very difficult to assess. We are dealing with the actions of one man and we do not know where it leads us.”