This winter, six million households in the UK will face possible morning and evening power outages due to sanctions against Russia, as will consumers across Europe, writes Simon Jenkins in The Guardian.
And this despite the fact that Europe pays Russia about a billion dollars a day for the gas and oil it continues to consume. This seems crazy. EU proposals to stop payments are understandably met with resistance from countries close to Russia and heavily dependent on its fossil fuels; Germany buys 12% of its oil and 35% of its gas from Russia.
The EU in Brussels does not seem to know what to do. A diplomatic compromise was reached—an exemption from pipeline import sanctions that would spare Hungary and Germany—but no practical plan was agreed upon. The real reason is that the debate about sanctions weapons has been reduced to macho rhetoric. They must induce the foreign regime to change its unacceptable policy. This rarely, if ever, happens, and in the case of Russia, this strategy clearly failed. Apologists now claim that sanctions are just a deterrent meant to work in the medium to long term.
The sanctions may have hurt Russia's creditworthiness, but only a 70 percent jump in global gas prices has increased its balance of payments. The current account surplus, according to the central bank, is now more than three times its pre-invasion level. At the same time, the sanctions are clearly hurting the Western and Central European countries that impose them.
It is absurd to expect Hungary to starve itself of energy and, as it says, "bomb" its economy without any definite goal or timetable. Sanctions have a terrible habit of being difficult to dismantle. The worst is ahead. Russia's response to the sanctions has been to threaten to cut off gas supplies to Europe, pushing prices even higher in its favor. It is already blocking the Black Sea ports, from where millions of tons of Ukrainian grain are usually sent to the outside world. This blockade resulted in a 48% increase in cereal prices compared to 2019 levels, with devastating effects on markets, especially in Africa. This also, in turn, increased the value of Russian grain exports. Russia has offered to lift the blockade if the sanctions are lifted. The West cannot turn a blind eye to the unintended consequences of its sanctions war.
NATO is showing reasonable scrupulousness, preventing the escalation of the war in Ukraine into a pan-European conflict. Sanctions do not know such subtleties. Millions of innocent people across Europe and far from its shores will suffer because of the sharp rise in food and energy prices. Supply lines are broken. Trade ties are crumbling. The victims are mostly the poor.
The goal - to force Russia to withdraw its troops from Ukraine - has clearly not been achieved. But the damage done to the rest of Europe and the outside world is now clear. The EU must continue to assist Ukraine in military operations and lift economic sanctions against Russia. They are self-destructive and needlessly cruel.
