The Big Loophole In Russian Sanctions

Alex Pareene: “Western Europe and the United States are currently waging economic war on Russia. Russia, for its part, is currently waging regular war on Ukraine, which is reliably a faster way to kill the most people, but the scope of the economic warfare against Russia is noteworthy. The U.S. and E.U. (and other allied nations) are not merely trying to punish Russia with sanctions; they are actively blowing up its economy…”

“The logic of economic sanctions is that they allow you to punish a country without going to war with it, which is largely why they have become ‘Washington’s go-to foreign policy tool.’ But there is one pipeline-sized loophole in this campaign to destroy the Russian economy. Europe—and especially Germany, Western Europe’s Main Character—is utterly dependent on Russia for fossil fuels, and the sanctions regime is intentionally designed to protect that market.”