It doesn’t seem that Ukraine has much of a choice —
Russia has them by the short hairs and their only choice is to turn the thermostat down or go begging to Europe for money to pay Russia or raise the price of what they sell to Russia.
“It doesn’t seem that Ukraine has much of a choice —”
Wrong. Work is already underway to reverse the flow of natural gas in the pipelines to supply the Ukraine from Weastern Europe at market prices. Although the move will not satisfy Ukraine’s supply and economic needs in the short term, new supplies can be delivered to the Ukraine in the mid-term and long term from a variety of sources. Western Europe in the long term is also going to need the same alternative supplies as the Ukraine. Those new supplies can come from massive fields in the Mediterranean, the North Sea, and fracking existing fields in Eastern Europe.
The problems may be especially difficult in the short term, but they are quite soluble in the long term. Loss of most of Europe as customers for Russia will have long term disastrous effects upon the economy of Russia as it did upon the Soviet Union.
I wonder how much coal can they use? We have bunch of it and having been shipping a lot thru the port of Norfolk to China. I am sure one of these ships can be moved over to another run. Also, Odessa has a has a gas port, so we could ship gas there. Lots of options, just a lack of willpower to use them.