Project EU has now begun to consume itself over its leadership’s fanatical devotion to Project Ukraine. Part of their support for Ukraine involves a relentless and escalating economic warfare against Russia.
On Friday, 17 October a Polish court blocked the extradition to Germany of a suspected Nord Stream bomber and ordered his release. Judge Dariusz Lubowski explained the reasoning behind his decision:
“Blowing up of critical infrastructure…during a just, defensive war…is not sabotage, but rather military actions…which under no circumstances can constitute crimes.”
The decision immediately triggered a wave of very public displays of gloating and approval, among others, by Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk and his Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski. In a reply to Hungary’s Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó posted on X, Sikorski said, “I am proud of the Polish court which ruled that sabotaging an invader is no crime.”
It is not irrelevant here to recall that Sikorski is a British agent and a close personal friend of Boris Johnson’s. Sikorski’s boss, Donald Tusk went so far as declaring on X that all “Russian targets” in the EU are legitimate. It’s almost like they all knew something…
The mother of all coincidences
Only three days later, on Monday, 20 October an explosion occurred at the Lukoil refinery in Ploieşti, Romania, resulting in at least one death. Lukoil is a Russian oil company, and Romania is a member of NATO and the EU. A few hours later, on the night of October 20/21 there was an explosion at Hungary’s biggest oil refinery in Százhalombatta, which supplies about 1/3rd of Hungary’s demand for refined petroleum products. A significant fire followed the explosion. The following day a fire broke out at the MOL refinery in Bratislava, Slovakia.
Well, one explosion and fire at an Eastern European refinery processing Russian oil is an accident. Two fires in the space of just a few hours is a coincidence. Three fires in 48 hours is an even bigger coincidence. But the highly publicized court decision setting a precedent that creates virtual impunity for such acts must be the mother of all coincidences.
There are a few obvious facts about these acts: they’re aimed at destroying all economic cooperation between Russia and EU member states. They are also punishing Hungary and Slovakia for their insufficient enthusiasm for the EU’s top priority foreign policy objective: war against Russia. Another obvious thing is that these escalations could and likely will draw more nations into the Ukraine war, including Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Poland and the Baltic States.
Who is behind the energy wars?
But who is behind all this is not so obvious. On 6 January of this year, my TrendCompass article was titled, “Europe’s energy wars: who is behind them?” Here’s an excerpt from that article in which the name Sikorski crops up again:
In 2014, Polish magazine Wprost leaked a secretly recorded conversation between Sikorski and the former Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski. Among other things in that conversation, Sikorski said that, “we’re going to antagonize Germany and Russia.” In addition, Sikorski was deeply involved in Ukraine’s 2014 Euromaidan coup and personally arranged for the training of about 80 of Ukrainian neo-Nazis in Poland. Some of those same trainees were later implicated in the 20th February 2014 rooftop shootings that killed as many as 100 protesters and policemen and precipitated the coup in Ukraine.
The full article is below:
Europe’s energy wars: who is behind them?
On the first day of this year, the 5-year contract for transit of the Russian natural gas across Ukraine to Russia expired and Ukraine’s dictator Zelensky refused to renew it. Slovakia’s President Robert Fico stated that Ukraine’s actions were “absurd,” and that the economic consequences for Slovakia will be disastrous. Before the war in Ukraine, 70% of Slovakia’s natural gas was supplied from Russia. According to Fico, Zelensky proposed to continue the transit, but only on condition that Slovakia not pay Russia for the gas until after the Ukraine war. Another nation that will take the brunt of pain from this move is Hungary and to a lesser extent, Austria.
The costs of the insanity
Back in April (“Economic and social suicide of the EU”) I elaborated on the costs of these energy wars. For example, before 2022, Russian oil was priced at €571 per ton — €155 cheaper than from other suppliers. But the Europeans sanctioned those supplies away. They also reduced imports of natural gas from Russia by more than half, from 48 million to 22 million tons. The Yamal–Europe pipeline was shut down, the Nord Stream pipelines were blown up, and by the end of 2024, Europe stopped using Ukraine’s gas transit system.
The damage from energy sanctions against Russia have so far surpassed half a trillion euros: had the EU continued buying Russian oil and gas at normal market prices over the past three years, it would have saved €544 billion:
- €178 billion on gas
- €187 billion on oil
- €70 billion on oil products
- €25 billion on coal
- €17 billion on electricity
According to Vedomosti, the main beneficiaries have been the United States and the UK who are now selling their oil and gas to Europe at triple the price. The EU idiocracy’s choice of more democratic Western hydrocarbons generated handsome windfalls for the suppliers who are more aligned with our values:
- €165 billion for the U.S.
- €85 billion for Norway
- €62 billion for the UK
All of this extra revenue has flowed out of Europeans’ pockets and straight abroad:
- ExxonMobil (U.S.): +$231 billion
- Shell (UK): +$209 billion
- BP (UK): +$200 billion
All this still pales in comparison to the sanctions’ impact on the EU’s GDP: the drop in gas supplies alone has cost the EU up to 2 percentage points of GDP growth annually. On average, the EU’s cumulative GDP loss is nearly 4%, adding to a staggering total of €1.3 trillion over three years. Germany has been hit the hardest — its economy is contracting for a second consecutive year. For the first time in economic history, the EU has entered a phase of deindustrialization: industrial output fell by 1% in 2023 and by 2.5% in 2024. In some sectors — like steel — the drop has been nothing short of catastrophic, at -18%.
The EU’s electricity now costs 3 times what it costs in the US, and its gas is 5 times more expensive. Even if the idiocracy somehow saw the light and reversed course today, the situation would not substantially improve before 2030. Thus far, consumer prices have increased by nearly 20% since the start of the conflict in Ukraine. In some sectors, the increases have been quite brutal:
- Coal: +73%
- Gas: +51%
- Gasoline: +43%
- Electricity: +32%
- Heating: +54%
- Airfare: +40%
These changes have collapsed the EU industries’ competitiveness and Germany alone has lost over 250,000 manufacturing jobs.
I wrote the above in April. Since then things only got significantly worse, and with the recent refinery attacks a new polarization is emerging between the pro-war camp and the anti-war camp in Europe. Now the pro-war camp seems to have gone on the offense. To use the old cliche, they crossed the Rubicon and there’s no telling how far they will go from there. It may be that Project Europe has now entered an accelerating phase of disintegration. It’s about to get a lot uglier from here.
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/https://www.niagarafallsreview.ca/content/dam/thestar/news/canada/2021/09/25/huawei-executive-meng-wanzhou-receives-warm-welcome-upon-return-to-china/_1_meng_wanzhou_2.jpg)
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