Wednesday, July 27, 2022

How The West's Sanctions On Russia Backfired

 

 

We Boggart Bloggers don't like to say, "We Told You So," we absolutely LOVE it.

The strategy adopted by the collectively demented Biden administration in the USA and supported by its allies in NATO and the European Union against Russia in Ukraine is fast proving a total fiasco, sanctioning Russia has backfired on the EU with Germany and several other nations now so short of natural gas for industry and domestic use they are having to introduce rationing. There have also been unintended consequences for international food and fertiliser which will inevitably worsen in the coming months.

EU countries which rely heavily on Russian oil and gas as a result of dismantling their own energy infrastructure in pursuit of idiotic 'Net Zero' targets set by the Brussels bureaucrats on the advice of a 15 year old Swedish retard are now doomed to the worst energy crisis since the 1970s when the cold weather arrives. With no way of averting the crisis they are also awakening to the threat of another mass migration from the starving Middle East and Africa, which depend on exported Ukrainian and Russian wheat for food because the war has cut off shipping routes through The Black Sea.

The full weight of this migration crisis will fall on the EU, which was flooded with a million illiterate, uneducated, unemployable, sex starved migrants in 2015 during the war in Syria and with whom it has struggled to cope in the years since. What will the EU do with a million or more others whom it cannot prevent from coming?

Ukrainian wheat exports are stuck in ports blockaded by the Russian Black Sea fleet. Russian exports are blocked by United Nation sanctions enforced by the USA. The world was told these sanctions would cripple the Russian economy and force Putin to abandon his military adventure in Ukraine. These have not only failed to achieve their objective but are seriously hurting the rest of the world, while Russia sells its gas and oil through proxies to Asia, Africa and under the counter to European nations brave or desperate enough to stand out from the crowd.

Why was none of this foreseen by the highly paid 'experts' who advise governments before the sanctions were imposed, when three retired old gits like us could see it in technicolour and 3D. Was it due to the arrogance of NATO governments that designed their sanctions in the exercise of so-called smart power? Turned out to be stupid power didn't it. Most stupid of all is the way those governments and their 'experts' are crying foul now Russia's retaliatory sanctions are hitting the west.

The Sanctions, deceitfully described as the toughest ever, appear to have been planned on the assumption that Russia's economy would quickly fold under them and the resulting political chaos in Moscow would trigger the removal of Vladimir Putin from the presidency. But the Russian economy prospered, the Rouble did not collapse, it grew stronger and Putin is still in control. The Russian army has captured 20 per cent of eastern Ukraine and intends to stay there until whatever peace is agreed and probably longer.

The other half of the strategy, based on the assumption that defensively-armed Ukrainian forces could defeat the Russians without NATO soldiers trained in hi-tech warfare fighting on the ground alongside them, has also failed.

In spite of all this, there is no evidence that Nato policy is being re-thought. The Russians are embedded in Ukraine and cannot be dislodged without direct, boots on the ground intervention from NATO, and this is not going to happen mainly because smaller NATO members that have borders with Russia would be vulnerable and several large and economically powerful NATO members are dependent of Russia for gas and electricity. Rarely has the phrase ‘sleep-walking to disaster’ seemed more apt now that we see the horrifying result. Putin has the west over a barrell (of oil) and is shafting us up the (Nord Stream) pipeline.

Foreign policy ‘realists’ blame successive US administrations for provoking the war by expanding NATO eastward after the Soviet Union fell and inviting Ukraine to join. This is denied by war hawks, who claim NATO was never a threat to Russia even while its recruitment policy over the past 35 years is evidence that the alliance was working to surround Russia.  There were even plans to recruit Georgia and Kazakhstan to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. NATO may officially be defensive but there is little difference between a defensive and offensive alliance when it can transform itself from one to the other in an instant as the Russians fear.

The latest delusional prognostication from Washington is that the Russians will feel the full bite of sanctions this autumn but there is no reason to believe this is anything but wishful thinking born of desperation that NATO ’s failed policies will somehow come right.

The realist counter-argument to the proposal to admit Ukraine to NATO, that Russia is genuinely paranoid about the deployment of mainly American Nato troops and missiles on its western border, is dismissed as naïve sympathy for an anti-West aggressor who is a permanent threat to peace. But while the hawks in Washington, London and Paris can only point to a minor incursion into Georgia since the fall of the Soviet Union to back up their claim that Russia is an expansionist power, the Russians cite inverventions by the USA and NATO in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, The Balkans after the break up of Yugoslavia, and indirectly in Yemen to prove that far from being a mutual defence treaty, NATO has appointed itself the world's policeman, the military wing of The United Nations.

Everyone knew well in advance that Putin would invade Ukraine. The question is: why, if Biden wasn’t going to try to prevent war by negotiating with the Russian leader, the West did not give more thought to dealing the dire consequences on which it has since impaled itself?

The energy crisis was unfolding long before sanctions cut off Russian oil and gas, an action which would inevitably aggravate it, were imposed. The blockade of Ukraine’s main wheat export port of Odessa was foreseeable. The ensuing shortage of wheat in the Middle East and Africa was an inevitable consequence. Was any thought given to other ways to feed these peoples? Was there any contingency plan?

Another increasingly significant factor in the direction the conflict may now take of the conflict is public opinion, especially in Europe as people begin to suffer the full economic and social impact of the choices their leaders have made.Runaway inflation, fuel poverty, cold showers, empty supermarket shelves ... People will not give indefinite support to a cause in which they perceive no direct national stake and which has only negative effects on them. Ukraine was portrayed as a necessary ‘good war’ but looks more and more like a bad one for which the west has no exit strategy.

The EU expects Putin to weaponise or even totally cut off its energy exports to Germany and northern Europe via the Nord Stream pipeline, and has asked member countries to reduce their gas usage by 15 per cent between August and March. It proposes to grant itself powers to enforce the limitation thus usurping a little more of member states' sovereignty.

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen complained hypocritically to the media that ‘Russia is blackmailing us. Russia is using energy as a weapon’. Translation – we can sanction Russia but it’s not fair for Russia to sanction us.

RELATED:

MORE posts on Net Zero - The Idealogues Attack On Civilisation, bowse this catalogue of our posts on the disastrous 'net zero' policy promoted by the United Nations and the World Economic Forum. The pseudoscientific theory that Carbon Dioxide emitted by hunan activities is alone responsible for climate change and the consequent shift to obtaining electrical energy from unreliable, intermittent, 'sustainable' sources is causing the collapse of the global economy.

European Union Is Again Close To A Meltdown As Eurozone Economy Collapses
Once more we return to the political instability and economic fragility of the European Union as the conflict in Ukraine combined with loonytoons Climate Change mitigation policies, the failure of 'sustainables' to meet ever increasing demand for electricity, fod shortages and rampant price inflation put economic and social pressure on governments of member states ...

Russian Long Range Missile Test Fuels Nuclear War Fears As NATO Pushed Ukraine To Escalate Conflict
Russia tested its latest intercontinental ballistic missile yeserday, the Satan II has a range of 10,000 miles and can devastate an area of 250,000 square kilometers according to military experts. Bizarrely commentators in mainsteam and online news services portrayed this as a sign of weakness by Russia, though the same people cheered when Joe (Dementiaman) Biden threratened a nuclear response if Russia crossed his 'red lines' in Ukraine ...

We The Good Guys Versus They The Bad Guys Reporting Does Not Make Sense For The Ukraine Crisis
Mainstream media reporting of the conflict in Ukraine has disappointed. Perhaps I was naive to suppose that lessons might have been learned from the hits their print sales and online traffic rates took as a result of their handling the COVID pandemic But instead of focusing on the most obviously newsworthy aspect of the build up to and escalation of the war, Russia’s view of NATO expansion into Ukraine and even further to Georgia and Kazakhstan, news reports have simply demonised Russia and portrayed Ukraine as the good guys.

Boris and Biden Can't Blame Ukraine War For Energy Crisis
With typical arrogance and condescension towards the people who elected them Boris Johnson, Joe Biden and their respectiive presstitutes are trying to spin the energy crisis Europe and North America are currently facing as somehow being linked to the conflict in Ukraine and therfore blame is being attactched to Russia and Vladimir Putin. Do they really think we are stupid enough to believe such unmitigated bollocks? ...

Even If The War In Ukraine Ends, Sanctions Will Stay - So How Bad Will The Food Crisis Get?
Western leaders, desperate to show their own countries they were taking a firm stance on Russia's invasion of Ukraine, were quick to impose economic sanctions ... so quick in fact that they acted before they had though things through. While freezing Russia out of the global finance system they have exacerbated the wests energy crisis, while Russia's retaliatory ban on raw materials (fertiliser) exports will create extra problems on top of those we already had ...

Europe's Depleted Gas Storage Might Not Get Refilled Ahead Of Next Winter
While mainstream news reporting of the conflict in Ukraine continues to pump out a torrent of anri - Russia, pro - war propaganda the catastropic effects of this war that could so easily have been avoided are not mentioned. Well why would warmongering governments admit they have inflicted an energy crisis, food shortages and soaring living costs on their people for no good reason ...

Putin, Macron To Hold Urgent Talks To Halt Military Escalation In Ukraine
Even though the leaders of Ukraine itself are talking down the threat of war with Russia over the breakaway region of Donbas, America and Britain are still beating the war drums and demonising Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Russia insists they have no plans to invade Ukraine and one western leader at least, France's Emmanuel Macron, seems to be listening to messages coming out of the East European trouble spot...

Germany News Mag. Spiegel Asks "Is Vladimir Putin Right?" About NATO Expansion
As the confrontation along the border between Ukraine and Russia has escalated to actual shooting with ethnic Russian rebel separatists in Donbas reporting intensified shelling and initiating a "general mobilization" of military-age males, with Moscow denying they plan to invade and Ukraine's leaders accusing US, UK and French leaders of hysteria for talking up the threat of war, Germany's leading newspaper Spiegel asks the question fundamental to the entire conflict...

While Crazy Joe Biden Claims Victory Over Russia, NATO's Expansin Plans Have Been Derailed By PutinJoe Biden (or his handlers because we all know Joe's mind is gone,) have been trying to spin reports of Russian troops withdrawing from positions close to the Ukraine border as a diplomatic victory for the USA over Putin but in the geopolitical game things are seldom what they seem to be ...

As The COVID Narratyive Crumbles War Takes Over As The Scary Monster That Keeps People In Fear
As the COVID narrative crumbles under the weight of evidence that the vaccines do not work, masks are useless and lockdowns kill more than they save a new scaremongering narrative - or a revamped old one - is emerging as the threat of war with Russia is the latest fear and panic vehicle to scare the people into compliance with tyranny. Continue reading >>>

Are US Supplied Long Range Missiles Really Winning The War For Ukraine?
Since very soon after the start of the war between Russia and Ukraine western powers, USA, UK, EU and NATO have been doing everything possible to prolong and escalate the war. The latest move is to provide the Ukrainian military with long range HIMARS missile. Mainstream media are claiming this has tilted the balance in Ukraine's favour. But for what? To prolong the slaughter? ...

Russian Long Range Missile Test Fuels Nuclear War Fears As NATO Pushed Ukraine To Escalate Conflict
Russia tested its latest intercontinental ballistic missile yeserday, the Satan II has a range of 10,000 miles and can devastate an area of 250,000 square kilometers according to military experts. Bizarrely commentators in mainsteam and online news services portrayed this as a sign of weakness by Russia, though the same people cheered when Joe (Dementiaman) Biden threratened a nuclear response if Russia crossed his 'red lines' in Ukraine ...

We The Good Guys Versus They The Bad Guys Reporting Does Not Make Sense For The Ukraine Crisis
Mainstream media reporting of the conflict in Ukraine has disappointed. Perhaps I was naive to suppose that lessons might have been learned from the hits their print sales and online traffic rates took as a result of their handling the COVID pandemic But instead of focusing on the most obviously newsworthy aspect of the build up to and escalation of the war, Russia’s view of NATO expansion into Ukraine and even further to Georgia and Kazakhstan, news reports have simply demonised Russia and portrayed Ukraine as the good guys.

Even If The War In Ukraine Ends, Sanctions Will Stay - So How Bad Will The Food Crisis Get?
Western leaders, desperate to show their own countries they were taking a firm stance on Russia's invasion of Ukraine, were quick to impose economic sanctions ... so quick in fact that they acted before they had though things through. While freezing Russia out of the global finance system they have exacerbated the wests energy crisis, while Russia's retaliatory ban on raw materials (fertiliser) exports will create extra problems on top of those we already had ...

While Crazy Joe Biden Claims Victory Over Russia, NATO's Expansin Plans Have Been Derailed By PutinJoe Biden (or his handlers because we all know Joe's mind is gone,) have been trying to spin reports of Russian troops withdrawing from positions close to the Ukraine border as a diplomatic victory for the USA over Putin but in the geopolitical game things are seldom what they seem to be ...


Mainstream media's hyping of the threat to Ukrained posed by Russian aggression is the latest in a long line of attempts to lay blame for western foreign policy disasters at the feet of Russia. In fact had Joe Biden not started to babble about Russian aggression, talking up the threat of conflict, there would be no crisis ...

No comments: