Quote:
Originally Posted by mapuc
From Danish TV2News
Despite sanctions from the EU and US, 2022 looks likely to be the most profitable year ever for Russia's oil and gas industry.
The situation in Russia at this moment is giving us all a quick lesson in supply and demand.
(...)
Several raw materials have also risen in price, including nickel, platinum and palladium, which Russia also produces a lot of.
In total, Bloomberg Economics expects Russia's total earnings from sales of raw materials, oil and gas to reach more than the $300 billion frozen by the US and other Western countries after the invasion.
Markus
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Yep, since weeks already it becomes more and more obvious that the sanctions more or less backfire, at least in parts: gas, oil, and certain ores and industrial commodities. We stumble over our own dependency on these.
And we get openly blackmailed over our moral values: hunger in the world, grain deliveries interrupted by force, and hundreds of millions of people taken hostage by the Kremlin. From that direction, the global mood will soon start to swing against the ukrainians.
Regarding Russia, the baby is dead, we threw it out with the bath water, but regarding China - well, China is in control of relevant and indispensable ammounts of commodities we need for our precious energy turnaround. Rare earths, solar panels, windmills, you name it - without China our wonderful idea must collapse. And if it succeeds we find ourselves depending on China. Not to mention that China economically struggles and maybe cannot fulfill the epxcetations we put into it, even if it wants to play nice.
It sucks. Welcome in the 22nd century. Think its gonna get even much worse and even more brutal. Cannot see Europe having the muscle - the real muscle, not just some word-enriched hogwash - to make it. In a certain, grim way, that's comforting. I never was a friend of the European illusions. Maybe this is the age of hard lessons in Realpolitik. And maybe not just in what Bubble-Olaf thinks Realpolitik is. My understanding of Realpolitik includes being taught by pain and failure how illusive ones own daydreams are. So far the Europeans, especially the Germans, desperately try to save them. They will lose.
For Germany amiognst the Europeans nations it is especially bitter.
Decades of foreign politlical paradigms of theirs, half a century of self-betrayal: ALL
FAILED and exploded them into their faces.
The body still twitches. But these are only reflexes.