In other words, anytime Europe differed with Russian policy they would have that hanging over their heads. This was a very stupid thing to do. One does not become so dependent on a sole foreign source of something vital without severe consequences.
Btw, see the excessive global dependency on China for another not unrelated set of problems.
Putin obviously thought that dependency would matter in 2022. It almost did, he was just...premature.
“Putin obviously thought that dependency would matter in 2022. It almost did, he was just...premature.”
Europe made their choices...they chose “ALL”, which wasn’t an option (as they learned the hard way).
Europe is far from out of the woods, even in a best case, they’ll never be competitive again in energy-heavy industries (which was most of Germany’s industry). And, at a minimum, Putin managed to do something that literally NO POLITICIAN in Europe was able to do, which was to send Greta back to The Spectrum. I’m still waiting for Europe to thank him for that.
Agree on China, by the way.