What's the alternative though? I also wish we would completely stop paying Russia, but this will come at incredible financial and stability (i.e: Europe falling apart) costs. Perhaps we should increase our spending on ending the war sooner instead. I don't know. We're caught between a rock and a hard place.

EU level energy emergency measures. So much time lost already since late February. Measures would have to radically focus on short term returns to yield a timely effect.

Some ideas to evaluate, in no particular order. Some are (close to mainstream), others elephant's shit:

- accelerated LNG terminal buildouts (butchering Nordstream 2 and making it a terminal at the coast, ...)

- EU level natural gas purchasing

- carrots for lowering per capita energy consumption: insulation, contests, subsidies, ...

- temporary ban on use of cars with >= 3l engines

- 100 km/h EU wide maximum speed limit

- no private jet traffic except for medical emergencies

- temporarily extend/unmothball coal and nuclear electricity plants - temporary regulatory relaxation on wood harvesting for heating purposes

- 24/7 production at any and every solar panel, wind turbine, insulation and heat pump manufacturer - faster rollout of planned (hvdc) interconnects - EU wide helicopter money for paying energy bills or lowering them: per capita, differentiated by climate zone

- (possibly) concentrate large solar and green hydrogen projects in southern EU (higher immediate returns)

- intensive direct wage support for employees in temporarily loss-leading energy intensive sectors

- ..._

Well, what was the alternative during WWII? Defeating Nazi Germany for instance. Which is what happened. But surely not doing business with it during the war, that's self explanatory.

I think you're underestimating our dependency on energy in the modern world. It might be easier to convince us to just go ahead and start WW3, but we aren't going to do that, sorry. I hope we can find some way out of this that will be less harmful. What that will be I suppose only time will tell.

And how is Europe commiting collective suicide going to defeat Russia?

Must be fun looking in at all this from the sidelines.

I'm an european, and I never understood this...

We sent our soldiers to every shithole america decided to "bring democracy to", but now, ukraine has become so important, that we are willing to destroy our own economy and "passively fight" until the "last dead ukranian", to achieve what exactly?

Where would you draw the line? Moldova? Baltic countries? Poland? Everyone for themselves?

Where did we draw the line with USA?

In Pearl Harbor. It was later than it could be obviously.

His aspirations are much larger than Ukraine.

>doing business with [Nazi Germany] during the war

it is often forgotten that this is exactly what the US did for the first 2-3 years of the war. Germany swallowed up the wealth of Europe. Britain had already swallowed up the wealth of a quarter of the world. the US swallowed up both of their wealth and ended the war with 2/3 of the world's gold

this is a simplification, but it's also huge overarching story of WW2 that is often missed. people know the US and Russia became the world's two superpowers, but there's very little attention paid as to how the US came to be one of them

what does this have to do with OP's post?

Also, your question is far more complex and not comparable to the russo-ukraine war.

For one, the geo-political situation prior to WW2 and especially compared to today might aswell be from a completely different planet. Prior to world war 2, a intranational political union like the EU did not exist, not to mention most countries in europe weren't democracies at the time.

I don't see a lot of differences really in regards to the question of doing business with such regimes which equals to aiding their war.

perhaps the worry is that if Europe collapses, we may discover some of the members actually align with Putin? That's the nature of democracy, all it takes is a candidate (which we usually label as "populist") to leverage the resentment of the hardship endured because of being anti-putin.

In Eastern European countries this resentment almost surely already exists through some sort of “Russia’s Phoenix resurrected from the ashes”

I was more thinking about countries like Italy, that don't feel a direct threat from Russia; quite the contrary they feel they have everything to lose by keeping the current stance.

I have a declared fascist father in law, and he sided with Putin from the very start (his opinions are generally an unimaginative mirror of what he reads in the major Italian newspaper he reads)

Coming from Eastern Europe... Here the fear is that Western Europe will end up in bed with Putin and sell us off.

Here anti-Russian notion was written in genes in cruel ways for generations

See since you have Lithuanian name I know for sure a lot of Lithuanian liberal youth whose parents still habitually watch Russian television, so I am not sure what you are talking about in regards to that "anti-Russian notion in genes", that's just plainly not true.

Part of older generation does live in Russian media sphere. Tiny part of younger generation too. But combined that's definitely not a big part.

There're plenty of polls about views on Russian-Ukraine war. And views are pretty one sided.

Another division is people who were moved here by soviet government. It's not uncommon that the old generation, born outside of Lithuania, lives in Russian media, sometimes not even speaking Lithuanian after decades of living here. Yet their (grand)children are well integrated into Lithuanian society, including anti-Russian notion.

.... and then we have our own bunch of Russofiles for various reasons. Including among youth, and even what you'd call liberal youth. Some famous people now do incredible stunts to cover pre-Russian-invasion actions. While others stick to their guns.

Agreed.

That's a strange question, as several big chunks of Europe were allied with Germany at various points after WWII started (and others remained neutral).

Didn't know WWIII already started. If you meant stopping doing businesses with a country that invades another, I'm sorry to tell you that there are not enough "non-invading" countries that can sell all the resources that we in the EU need now.

Exactly my point. Trying to whitewash this with "need to do business" isn't helping your arguments. Some tried to use same ones for doing business with Nazis during WWII. They very much don't like when anyone reminds about it today.

Same will be for anyone who is doing business with Putin's fascists today.

I find it deeply concerning we are still very much in bed with Putin. We should have taken drastic steps early and maybe be half way in tapping alternative sources. The fact Germany is happily closing nuclear power plants shows Europe is in for a rude awakening when Putin tightens the vice.

Have you done the numbers on how many nuclear power stations you need to replace all gas and oil heating in Germany? What would be your guess? 2 or 3? Or maybe it's more than France has at the moment. Just a thought...

And who do we buy oil/gas from? Venezuela? Iran? Saudi Arabia? United States? I don't see a reason why those countries are better than Russia.

Because none of those plan on taking over europe. Russia still has the goal to directly control all slavic countries and indirectly control the rest of Europe. Most europeans remember the USSR.

None of these countries are actively trying to erase another country from the map right now.

The US is a democratic country so far, Russia is not.

It’s incredibly childish, stupid and dangerous to pretend that these countries are all equally evil.

Does being a democracy make the US a better country than the others? If it's the voters, and not a guy, who decides to invade and take over your country, then is it OK?

And while none of those countries may be involved in a military conflict right now, they've been in the past. Recently.

So given there is no good country selling gas right now, I prefer to get the cheapest one. Thanks.

"Given that there is no perfect food, they are all the same to me. And thus I prefer to eat dirt, since it's the cheapest."

Unfortunately it doesn’t even matter. The infrastructure simply doesn’t exist and takes many months to build. Germany could choose to buy from anywhere but it doesn’t matter, there’s no way to get the gas to where it’s needed in time for winter.

Well unfortunately Germany doesn’t have a leader strong enough to announce a military regime and ration the heating in the country.

How many invading your neighbours?

Well, I disapprove the raping and killing of entire families no matter if they're my neighbors or they live a couple of countries away. Don't you?

There is only one country who’s trying to erase another from the map of Europe right now, and it’s Russia.

It’s important to understand that Russia is a much bigger threat to European safety than the Saudis.

When it comes to defending central european borders, your whataboutism isn’t helpful.

You may call this cynical. But I think that this whataboutism that leads to inaction is the most cynical of all.

Are you serious.

This is factually wrong.

Which half? The nazi-occupied half, or the nazi-allied half?

Obviously anti-Nazi allied part.

So... the UK?

Most of Europe got overrun. Bizarrely enough in my own country the German occupation made the economy boom- as we were Arians the Nazis didn't steal anything until D-day. It became obvious the Reichsmark would be pretty useless after Germany lost so the whole house of cards collapsed.

When do you count start of WWII? Austria? Czechoslovakia? Poland? USSR? Or USSR's attacks on Poland, Baltic states and Finland?

Not as fast as you believe, and no one really cut ties with early USSR despite all its atrocities

I think after the invasion of France.

Let's be clear - those who support Putin today are fascist sympathizers and no amount of demagoguery is going to change that.

What I'm surprised about are such pro-fascist comments here on HN. But good thing is that today it's becoming more and more clear to most, including in Europe. There will be no more sitting on two chairs for those who support Putin's fascism.

Where should we buy gas from? List some alternatives for us. (Don't mention the US -- they are a bigger criminal than Russia, evidently)