Russian President Vladimir Putin is proving to be a masterful geopolitical player with ever move he implements to counter tired, predictable and toothless sanction efforts imposed on him by corrupt and morally bankrupt Western countries.
For more than a decade, Putin allowed Europe to become heavily dependent on food, energy and other vital commodities supplied by Russia, knowing that with each passing year he would eventually be in a position to withstand any punishing actions against him if not dictate terms outright once he began to reconstitute the former USSR by force, which has long been a vision of his.
When he began positioning more than 100,000 men and battalions of heavy military equipment around Ukraine last fall in anticipation of an invasion -- which happened in late February -- even then the Europeans continued to do business with Putin, if for no other reason than by that time, they had little choice.
Germany, for instance, was not only reliant on Russia for natural gas, the country was building a gas pipeline with Russia even after then-President Donald Trump warned Berlin not to do so and after he reminded the German government, then led by Chancellor Angela Merkel, that it made no sense to build up NATO as a bulwark against Russia only to provide Moscow with tens of billions of dollars in revenue and put Putin in the driver's seat during any future emergency.
Trump, of course, proved to be right: After Putin invaded, Russia hesitated at first to cut off its gas supply from Russia, at least until the country could find new sources, while at the same time keeping its other trade lanes open with Moscow that were still permitted even under a newly imposed sanctions regime.
Now, even those carve-outs are collapsing and are putting the Europeans in the position of not being able to purchase enough food to feed the continent, per The Consul, which noted that Putin has signed a decree declaring that Russia would no longer sell vital raw materials to countries that it considered 'unfriendly.'"
The report adds:
These include most of the nations of the West. This step is a complete disaster for the European Union. It is basically signing a death warrant for all European economies. It is feared that European economies might not survive this draconian action. A year from now, the standard of living of all Europeans will be substantially lower than what it is today. It is the right time now for all Europeans to consider what is about to come and how will their lives be affected by this decree. If you are a middle-class resident of European Union, then a year from now you are mostly likely to become very poor and probably unemployed.
A number of economists, the report continues, have estimated that the Europeans have just committed "financial suicide" via the imposition of sanctions on Moscow.
The sanctions essentially amounted to "total economic warfare" against the Russian Federation and were implemented under the guise that they would lead to a collapse of the Russian economy. The West's corrupt, predictable leaders assumed that Russia was a bigger version of Iran and with nuclear weapons, and while Iran is too small to be self-sufficient, Russia is not too small and can take care of its own needs.
Russia grows much of the world's food; Russia produces a sizeable portion of the world's energy, nearly all of which is powered by fossil fuels (even factories that churn out solar panels and windmills); Russia manufactures its own military equipment; Russia has a vast intellectual class and is able to innovate; Russia has an industrial capacity; Russia has a mining industry from which to draw resources to power its manufacturing, etc.
The EU and the U.S. have exactly the same capabilities and in many cases, superior capabilities, but those economies have been hampered by left-wing climate change fearmongering fools and Marxists who convinced their leaders to put most of their resources off-limits. So while the U.S. and the EU could theoretically out-produce Russia, in practice they can't because they refuse to do so.
And Putin knew all of this before he sent one tank or one soldier or one helicopter into Ukraine.
Europe needs Russia, not the other way around. And the Europeans are about to learn this the hard way.
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