Highly Uncertain Endings to Conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza and Syria

The Gas Dimension in NATO War on Russia

Europe’s self-inflicted setbacks in the struggle by NATO against Russia over Ukraine accumulate: already, as a direct result of its backing for Ukraine’s New Year shut-off of Russian gas across Ukraine to Europe, the continent is experiencing higher energy prices (which Andrew Sullivan said would not happen).

These pressures are exacerbated by:

*high demand during a cold winter;

*further, economically suicidal Ukrainian attempts to damage TurkStream (which delivers Russian gas to Europe from the south) - a measure which will push Turkey further eastwards and consolidate its relations with Russia (following a very wobbly period in Russian-Turkish relations after Turkey’s invasion of Syria by its proxy, HTS; although now there is a better chance that Russia will stay in Syria).

*serious reductions in reserves of gas in European storage tanks, reducing the available gas to 100 days or less for many European countries;

*technical issues that have partly closed down the pipeline that delivers Azeri oil to Europe (reduction to 30% of the flow);

*short-term impacts of the latest Biden sanctions on Russian oil producers and tankers that will further reduce available supplies;

*even Ukrainian attacks - as earlier this week on Russian oil refineries in Saratov and Engels are not actually helping Europe…at all.

Indian analyst MK Bhadrakumar on Indian Punchline, notes that EU countries find Russian gas irresistible as it is reliable, abundant and cheap. Ukraine’s decision to cut off Russian supplies will trigger a price spiral for natural gas across the whole of Europe. The demand of Russian LNG will only increase. Europe is unhappy that US suppliers have taken advantage of gas shortage in Europe. US Big Oil sells LNG to Europeans at twice or thrice the price in the US domestic market and makes windfall profit.

Skyrocketing gas prices will further shoot up the cost of production in European economies, especislly in Germany. There will be resentment against Ukraine for inflicting pain on the countries that have supported it. Trump, Musk and Vance have a sympathetic audience in Germany for their support for AfD. 19% of German adults have a positive view of the AfD and the party is running second in opinion polls. Yet it has been the US – the key sponsor of the Ukraine crisis – that is the main beneficiary from the redistribution of the European energy market. Germany once benefitted from cheap Russian gas and Germans even used to sell surplus Russian gas after its own use to third countries, especially Poland, to make a tidy profit to subsidise its domestic price.

Bear in mind that even as recently as 2024 Russia was still the second largest supplier of gas to Europe (including LNG), behind Norway but ahead of the USA.

The price of staggering European folly in intensifying its own energy woes in the name of hurting (not so much) Russia - never more dramatically endorsed than by its complicity in the destruction of Nord Stream - is that both Russia and Trump are signaling that the way out of this conflict is a matter to be determined by Russia and the US with Ukraine (possibly, but only if Ukraine returns to having elections), and without Europe (who only seem to know how to mess things up for themselves and everyone else).

Partitioning Ukraine?

If Ukraine has a future (note that Russian NSC member and aide to the President Nikolai Patrushev doesn’t think it will survive 2025) this would have to involve some kind of partition agreement and the only way that I think Russia would even contemplate this would be if China enters the conversation as a potential guarantor for both a neutral Ukraine and for Russia. And even then I don’t see Russia would consent to any kind of European presence in a “peacekeeping” capacity. Otherwise, as head of the United Russia party and former Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, has indicated recently, Russia will likely continue its advance as far west as Lvov. He’ll not need to look far for Russians who are more than ready to take Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Mykolaev, Odessa and more, maybe even Moldova. (On Transnistia’s energy crisis, I understand that Russia is considering use of the Ukraine pipeline to deliver gas free, for humanitarian reasons).

Yalta 2

What Russia needs, and why Russians generally seems very positive about Trump and Trump’s recent statements on Ukraine (mainly to the effect that NATO provoked the conflict and the US needs to get out and focus on China), is because Trump presents himself as interest-driven as opposed to values-driven. Given how things are turning out, he must conclude that the US has nothing to gain in Ukraine and a lot (more) to lose and that, besides, an amicable Russia might weaken the strength of its alliance with China (a view which presumes, hopefully wrongly, that Russia can possibly imagine the US will be a trustworthy interlocutor any time soon).

More importantly there is a whiff in the air that we have entered an era for Yalta2-style rethinking of the world. Trumpian statements on Canada, Greenland and Panama reflect such winds of change, however bizarre and unlikely they currently seem. For now, this kind of capacity for radical rethinking is not a practical option for today’s US Congress, short of a Pearl Harbor or two, but it is an aspirational goal that could gradually attune the US more constructively to the China-Russia alliance, rise of the BRICS, the reality of an Asia that does not need the US nearly as much as the US likes the think, the gravity of the US debt load, wildly disproportionate expenditure on the military industrial complex, and the long term fragility of the dollar. In the context of a burning world.

The point about Greenland is not simply that with Greenland and Canada, the US acquires a share of the Arctic that comes closer to the extent of Russia’s existing control (and aren’t Greenland and Canada in NATO anyway?). The point is that through Greenland the US can better develop a new trading route that can compete with the northern sea route based in Murmansk, that is controlled largely by Russia and used mainly by China, a route which will afford year-round access within a few years, especially with the help of Russia’s advanced ice breakers that the US itself cannot currently match. This is a trading route that is faster and cheaper than the Suez canal. The northern sea route will link with the north south trading corridor which connects Russia with India and the rest of Asia.

Floundering Europe

The European Union looks more precarious by the day. Macron’s top diplomatic adviser Emmanuel Bonne has resigned, in part because Macron has favored Morocco over Algeria by recognizing Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. Whether the latest French minority government can survive more than a few more weeks looks doubtful, and this piles on the pressure for Macron to resign. In Germany, the AfD is increasingly behaving like the threat to the Establishment parties in the upcoming elections for February 23 that it indeed is. Neighboring Austria has already taken the path of a patriotic, sovereign, anti-migrant, anti-Ukraine country that AfD would take Germany were it to be given the chance following the elections. In Romania, a demonstration by up to 100,000 people against the recent cancellation of the results of the first round of a national election that would put in power a pro-Russian, soveriegn nationalist, Calin Georgescu (who topped the first round) and which illegal, falsely-premissed intervention from the EU itself, acting through the Brussels’-led Romanian Constitutional Court, has interrupted until, most likely, new elections scheduled for May 4 and 18. Neither Georgescu nor Weidel (AfD) want their countries to host offensive US missile systems that would put them on the top of Russia’s target list in the even of nuclear war.

Gaza

The Gaza ceasfire agreement announced yesterday seems less than wholly secure today. It would be difficult to put money on its actually being signed or it being implemented or, even if implemented, on it surviving the six weeks’ long first phase. That Israel killed dozens of Palestinians in the first 24 hours since first announcement of the agreement does not inspire confidence in Israeli sincerity. And it is clear that Netanyahu doesn’t like it, though he does need Trump’s support. The ceasefire has come as far as it has, largely because Trump talked loudly and threatened Netanyahu (with what, exactly - exposure to America of Netanyahu’s crimes against America?). The deal has to be agreed by Netanyahu’s cabinet, and we know that extremists Smotrich and Gvir are wholly opposed to the ceasefire. Whether they would actually leave the Cabinet for a political wildnerness is less certain. If they did, then yes, Netanyahu’s coalition might lose its majority, but a new majority could, most likely, be re-established quickly.

Iran

Tomorrow is the day that Iran’s President Peseshkian is due to sign the strategic partnership agreement with Russia. Weakened as it may be from the fall of Syria and the thrashing of Hezbollah influence in Syria, the deal with Russia, even if falling short of a full-blooded mutual defense arrangement, will strengthen Iran, and it will strengthen Russian activity in Iran, almost certainly guaranteeing that Iran will be protected by Russian air defense, integrating Russian and Iranian air defense systems, and most likely, in my view, with Russisa furnishing a continuing supply of hypersonic missiles - always assuming that Iran does not produce these for itself.

The deal will persuade Iran that it has no need to pursue a nuclear weapon, because it is not in Russia’s interest that it do so and that if Iran (once again) promises to back away from uranium purification then Israel will have no pretext for its aggression against Iran. This does not mean to say that this pretext is an authentic one - Israel simply resents the power exercised by Iran to curb Israeli regional ambitions. But the agreement with Russia and Iran has shown, once and for all, that Iran has no desire to develop a nuclear weapon and this may be sufficient for Israel’s western supporters to back off from the regional war that Israel would so dearly love the US to fight on its behalf.

Israel will probably not want to risk getting involved in a war in which Russia, even one in which Russia is not a direct combatant is deeply invested at a time when Israel is observing more aggressive attacks by Turkish SNA forces against the Kurdish SDF (allies of Israel) in the north and northeast of Syria; when Turkiye is instructing HTS to go after the SDF, and when Turkiye’s Erdogan is threatening to invade all of Syria. Having occupied southern Lebanon and southern Syria, Israel may wish to consolidate its newly acquired positions, some of which it has cleared of their original inhabitants in a defense-justified act of ethnic cleansing, and which also incorporate valuable waater resources (including in Quneitra province and the Al-Montara dam in Daraa province) that it can use for its mainland, and as Turkish forces establish control over water and electricity supplies in the north and northeast.

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