It's going to be a tough winter. 100% storage still doesn't last very long relative to historical usage. Cutbacks will have to be dramatic and a lot of industry will need to be shuttered(and already is, see metal refining).

So, once of a sudden, Europe is fine with shale gas as long as it's from another country. Europe seems fine with gas from Qatar as well, which also is waging a cruel war in Yemen with tons of deliberate civilian casulties!

1) in the short term Europe is not cutting gas from Russia, it's the other way round

2) in the long term, Europe is trying to get independent from Russian gas so that 1) will not happen again

Europe is trying to get away from being dependent from Russian gas for strategic, not humanistic reasons.

That being said, I hope we plan on no longer depending on Qatar either, because their stability doesn't seem a given either.

That would be the smart move. To greatly increase conservation (heat pumps, better insulation, etc. are low hanging fruits that will more than pay for themselves in a few years), reduce car driving in favor of cheaper and better public transport and/or bikes/ebikes, and to increase wind and solar power, both of which are as cheap if not cheaper than most sources of fossil fuels and can be brought online within months.

If Europe does not do this, then they will absolutely deserve the impact of the future geopolitical shocks that will inevitably increase as climate change causes migrations, inflation, increasing natural disasters, and ensuing political instability in fossil fuel providing nations, which are not coincidentally among the most ripe for political revolt.

How will reducing car driving save gas?

Dependence only starts at 10%+ of import shares... Europe is now dependent on Russia and Norway, and slightly dependent on Algeria. Any single other source be it Azerbaijan or LNG from US/Qatar/wherever is too small to cause the price jumps we've seen (and therefore not big enough to matter politically)...

Yes. The idea behind scaling up LNG is that it decouples Europe from any one supplier.

Once you're relying on LNG terminals rather than fixed pipes, you have a lot of source flexibility.

And really higher prices that will destroy German industrial competitiveness

>Europe is trying to get away from being dependent from Russian gas for strategic, not humanistic reasons.

I think the truth of this statement increases with a slight modification.

The US is trying to get Europe away from being dependent from Russian gas for strategic, not humanistic reasons.

Western European countries, and Germany especially have had to be pushed into supporting Ukraine.

> Western European countries, and Germany especially have had to be pushed into supporting Ukraine.

Absolutely untrue of "western countries", only of Germany.

The american "push" was welcome as a sign of confidence that we could support Ukraine not merely on our own, but with the backing of the United States. But this is our continent that is under attack. The US wouldn't otherwise care, but taking down Russia is a huge get for them so they care.

Yemen isn't in Europe's backyard, and it isn't culturally European.

If it was, you'd probably get a similar reaction.

Ukraine is as culturally European as Qatar.

That's a very ridiculous thing to say.

It’s hyperbolic, but yes, Ukraine is much more similar to Russia than to Western Europe.

Russia is much more European than Yemen. So is Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Croatia, Albania, and Macedonia.

Moscow and, especially, St. Petersburg are pretty European historically and culturally. Western Russia accounts for 77% of Russia's population and is predominately influenced by the culture of Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kyiv...

Europe isn't just Italy, Spain, & France...

Not every European country is Western European culturally...

You just moved the goalpost from "European" to "Western European", excluding Eastern Europeans because they're inconvenient to your point.

BTW, most Russians are European, living west of the Urals.

Sneak "western" in there and move the goalposts, why don't you.

Ukraine is culturally, geographically and geopolitically a European nation.

Russia and Ukraine are historically and culturally European. Russian expansion deep into Siberia is a relatively recent phenomenon. Sure, they're not Western European, but that's not what you said in your original comment.

Moscow and St. Petersburg - which make up a huge chunk of Russia economically, politically, and in terms of population - are very European historically and culturally.

But Russia is a gigantic country with a lot of population that isn't particularly European in any sense.

Ukraine on the other hand is basically 100% European any way you want to slice it beside Putin's revisionist history.

Technically, the last traces of what is known as Western Europe (i.e. catholic/protestant culture/architecture) end somewhere in the western Ukraine. Orthodoxy/Byzantium culture then starts in the eastern Ukraine.

The Russian world is a Muskovite imperialist invention my dear friend. You can't write Russian history without involving basically any other European country. Well, you could maybe leave Liechtenstein and Portugal out?

Dumb

I'd heard that Qatar withdrew in 2017 and was perhaps supporting the Houthis now, could you point me to some sources about the situation in 2022 so I could get up to date? I thought it was Saudi Arabia and UAE who were actively waging war.

And what's wrong with stop-gap measures to prevent an energy crisis?

As we can see, sanctions and arm-twisting are not stopping the war, not weakening Russia. Not even politically given the recent elections in Russia! Even Ukraine keeps buying Russian gas and I can't recall any comment from otherwise very vocal Zenesky about it! If there are supply issues, is due to all the nonsense coming from EU, which only hurts it, not Russia. Even if EU deversifies from Russia, it will be at a dear price and it will take time and will only replace one dependency with another.

Yesterday's headline:

"Russia’s budget surplus evaporates as energy revenues shrink"

https://www.ft.com/content/d9cdc51f-5fe3-4f4a-b0e8-054ef21a2...

> Russia’s budget surplus for 2022 has almost evaporated after a sharp drop in energy exports during August led to a monthly deficit of as much as Rbs360bn ($5.9bn).

Russia is increasingly cutting itself now too:

> Revenues look set to worsen following Russia’s suspension of Nord Stream 1, one of its main gas pipelines to Europe, in early September.

> Russia’s economy shrunk 4.3 per cent in July 2022 compared with the same month a year earlier, according to the country’s economy ministry. Analysts at Aton, a Russian brokerage, expect the economy to contract by a further 5 per cent in 2023 because of falling energy output.

Even more important than the economic shrinkage, is the destruction of Russian industry (including military industry) through deprivation of technology access. This is also ignored by the parent comment. Russia can't rebuild or restock their military without the required external tech (much of which has been shown to depend on the US semiconductor industry). All of Russia's more modern military hardware requires foreign semiconductors, they're wildly incompetent in nearly all aspects domestically on advanced tech hardware. The sanctions are draining their military capabilities, in the present and for the next decade or so.

Russia is trending toward empty when it comes to their military inventory and they won't be able to replenish it as things stand. The only way they can is if China steps in and provides an epic scale infusion (which is not in China's interest).

Meanwhile the US can rev its military industrial complex to an extreme degree as it sees fit; and in tandem with Ukraine, obliterate Russia's military to the extent the Russians are dumb enough to continue occupying Ukrainian territory and sending more of their soldiers and hardware to the slaughter. The US hasn't even begun to seriously rev its production capabilities.

The equation there is Russia is fucked. Their national strength derives from energy + military power / power perception - one of those is heavily destroyed (courtesy of Ukraine's military + NATO weapons + sanctions).

Russia is so incompetent and drained they're having to source drones from Iran and go begging to North Korea.

I wonder what this war is going to do to Russia's exports of military hardware. Not only can they not defend or re-supply themselves, but who is going to want their stripped down, even less capable export versions of their weapons now, after seeing it destroyed by a handful of pieces of 20-30 year old western tech?

- Sanctions are most definitely weakening Russia, by demolishing its economy in the medium- and long-term.

- Russia has no elections since it's a near-totalitarian autocracy with usurpers firmly in charge by force.

- Ukraine hasn't been buying Russian gas for about 5 years now. Russian gas is transited via Ukraine, even during the war, since it's a rare situation that's in the best interest of all parties to the conflict, but 0 gas is purchased by Ukraine from Russia.

- Supply issues are due to a war of aggression and attempts to deprive the aggressor of a major revenue source (which no one claimed will stop the war immediately, it's a long-term/punitive move).

- EU has no choice but to diversify from Russia, since the only alternative is neutering of the EU and vassalage in all foreign policy matters that Putin chooses. (A significant percentage of the people expressing concern about supply issues and advocating a reversal are in fact concern-trolling and probably want this to happen. Are you one of those?)

Russia uses energy as a weapon, so it must be deprived of this weapon.

>Ukraine hasn't been buying Russian gas for about 5 years now

Yeah, they buy hungarian gas that just happens to flow from Russia. This is called "virtual reverse"

>Russia uses energy as a weapon, so it must be deprived of this weapon.

I heard Russia is willing to give up some of that in exchange for some rubles

Okay, I'll modify that. Ukraine hasn't been buying gas from Russia for about 5 years now. It buys gas from Europe, regardless of where it originates. If Russia cuts off the supply completely, Ukraine will buy whatever it needs from Europe (it also has enough of its own gas to supply its households, just not its industry).

>I heard Russia is willing to give up some of that in exchange for some rubles

I won't wish Russia good luck in this endeavour past 2023-2024, but I will note that it'll need all the luck it can get.

How can we see that?

Sanctions are long term. We are not long term yet.

And Azerbaijan...