Temporary outages of pipelines will not “hurt” Russia enough to make them give up their key naval base.
The Russian national debt has been paid down to about 8% of GDP.
America’s is over 100% of GDP.
Ukraine does business with Russia, Europe and the US.
Billions of business with all three.
Those pushing for Ukraine to join the EU just went into a tizzy when the Ukrainian President did not want to go that far.
Joining the EU comes with a lot of requirements.
Would America want to join the EU ?
“Ukraine does business with Russia”
22% of its export goes to Russia
and
Ukraine imports 33% goods from Russia.
So if they want to shoot themselves in the foot, let them.
Besides, Ukraine owes Gasprom $2 billion for the delivered natural gas it hasn’t paid for and which was sold at half the market price. Gasprom announced that will turn off the taps, if the debt isn’t paid, and that in the future Ukraine will have to pay the gas at market price, no more reduction of 50%. Ukraine relies at the level of 60% of its energy needs on Russian oil and gas.
In other words, Putin is keeping Ukraine by the balls.