“Russian gas production is down”
Peter Zeihan pointed this Russian oil fact out first.>>>>>
That Russians must pump and sell their oil no matter what. And at whatever price. They are doing this right now!
Due to their oil extraction in very cold regions. The water in the crude freezes. Making pipes and valves burst if the crude is not flowing. In fact this took place in 1990s onward during the chaos of the USSR collapse. It took Russia 30 years to repair these blown pipes and valves. They would never have been able to do this, without all the expert European contractors they hired and brought in to do these repairs.
If these pipes and valves burst now, the European oil infrastructure contractors will not be coming to Putin’s new Russia. To save the day.
Russia has less than three more weeks to dance around, posturing for negotiations, before things get real, with Trump in charge.
Kyiv Independent reports:
“U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s team has not presented anything “interesting” to Moscow regarding ending the war in Ukraine, Russia’s envoy to the U.N., Vasily Nebenzya, said on Jan. 3 in an interview with the state-controlled Rossiya-1 TV channel.
Earlier reports from the Wall Street Journal indicated that Trump’s team is considering a plan to delay Ukraine’s NATO membership by at least 20 years in exchange for continued Western arms supplies and the deployment of European peacekeepers to monitor a ceasefire.
Nebenzya dismissed these ideas as “unformed, vague signals” and reiterated Moscow’s position against freezing the conflict.
“President (Vladimir) Putin last outlined our conditions for ending the conflict on Dec. 19. So far, nothing from the incoming U.S. administration suggests anything of interest to us,” Nebenzya said.”
Maybe pain, death and bankruptcy will interest them more.