Ukraine's Gas Fart is Fresh Air for Beijing

New readers should know that my Substack posts are dedicated to surveillance of matters related to a central premise, and that premise, put at its simplest, is that the collective West, made ever more desperate and ruthless because of its unsustainable debt load, is attempting to beat back the multiple forces of multipolarity. It is currently doing this on three main fronts: against Russia over the proxy excuse of defending Ukraine; against Iran over the proxy excuse of defending Israel; against China over the proxy excuse of defending Taiwan. But there is no limit to the number of fronts that the West will entertain.

Mainstream Media Gas Narratives

There are so many moments that remind one that almost the entirety of the western mainstream media system is either totally brainwashed or compromised by Deep State shenanigans.

One of those was media pretense that it actually believed the WMD hoax prior to the US-led invasion of Iraq; another was the fiction that Assad had used chemical weapons immediately after being told by Obama that such use would be a red-line and might plausibly bring the entire collective West crashing down on Assad’s head.

Then there was Russiagate, the idea that none other than Donald Trump was a patsy for Putin. And, when Nord Stream One was blown up, after President Biden, had told the entire world that he would destroy it if Russia invaded Ukraine, practically the entire western mainstream media system somehow managed to stay totally silent in face of a Substack story from among the elite of star US investigative reporters, Seymour Hersh, that purported to show how Biden had actually carried out his threat.

And now we see the same tired, corrupt and incompetent old gang invent new lies, the mendacity totally obvious to even the mildly well-informed, to the effect that it was Russia that stopped supplying gas to Europe in 2022 and that, there again, it was Russia that decided to shut off the supply of gas to Europe via Ukraine.

What Europe Did

No, it was Europe (with the support of, or following the leadership of the US) that gave notice that it would cease pipeline imports of gas from late 2022; it was Europe that rejected Russia’s requirement that up until Europe’s unilateral decision took effect that Europe should pay in rubles; it was Europe that later tried, in vain, to damage Russian oil export revenues by unilaterally imposing an oil price cap; it is Europe that sanctions countries, shipping companies and others who it claims violate Europe’s restrictions on Russian energy trade. And who is it who has just turned off the supply of Russian gas that flows across Ukraine to European customers? Ukraine, dummy, not Russia!

Who Does Europe Hurt?

Who gets hurt, most of all, by Europe’s anti-Russian energy campaign? Europe, first and foremost. The ending of cheap Russian gas to Germany is the single most important cause of the ensuing deindustrialization and economic stagnation of Germany, Europe’s leading economy (if we don’t count Russia), and of the higher energy prices and economic malaise afflicting most of Europe since February 2022.

It is not Russia that gets hurt. Russia has just completed its Power of Siberia pipeline to China, and the route for the second Power of Siberia pipeline to China - through an increasingly pro-Russian Kazakhstan - has been agreed. The suppression of Russian markets in Europe is fast being compensated for by the extension of Russian energy trade eastwards. China benefits and so does Russia and so possibly will many Russian gas clients in Central, East and South Asia. Most important of them is India.

The two most populous nations of the world - the world’s second major economy, and one of the world’s fastest growing economies - these are among the principal clients for Russian gas.

Europe gets hurt most - byt Europe, on behalf of the US. The US will grow richer on the supply of expensive US LNG to Europe (so long as supply lasts, which will depend on the needs of the US market, and the speed with which the availability of shale oil declines), and of similarly expensive LNG gas from Qatar and, also, from Russia itself - the second major source of LNG supply to Europe after the US (although Russian supply is being sanctioned by the US).

Ukraine Hurting

Ukraine gets hurt because it now has to get its gas from elsewhere - perhaps gas bought by a European partner which acquires it from Turkstream, gas which is still partly Russian but only at a higher price than Ukraine was paying.

The same applies, only more expensive still, to the US LNG which Ukraine has already begun to receive. Ukraine will lose the money it earned from the transmission of Russian gas through its pipelines. It will lose its ability to access Russian gas at very low prices (especially if the cost is being subsidized by European customers for the Russian gas they take from Ukraine) and then to sell this on to other users at higher prices - a business opportunity that accounts for the wealth of certain Ukrainian oligarchs.

Ukraine will also be damaged if Russia decides that since the Ukrainian pipelines are no longer carrying Russian gas, Russia may as well destroy them, which will impede Ukraine from using the pipelines to carry gas received from elsewhere (e.g. gas received from Azerbaijan, cited as a possible compensating source, even though this would have to pass through Russia to get to Ukraine).

Ukraine’s motive is seemingly to punish Russia, but Russia will be set back to the tune of $5 billion - a loss, to be sure, but not of existential magnitude and probably recoverable from other sources. Ukraine may believe that it will benefit from the consequences that its actions will have for Transnistria and how this will lure Russia into exposing its flanks to Ukrainian and, possibly, to a new NATO army assembled for the purpose, as Russia tries to cut through southwestern Ukraine from Kherson in order to bring supplies to Transnistria (see more below).

US Hostility to a Unified European Asia

The United States had been adamantly opposed to the German-Russian Nord Stream pipeline(s) from their inception in the 2000’s because they represented a growing European dependence on Russian gas (in place of hoped-for European dependence on US gas), one which former German Chancellor Angela Merkel saw would be a boon to Germany industry. The US actually imposed sanctions on those involved in the construction of Nord Stream 2.

Further, the Nord Stream pipelines had been routed in such a way that they by-passed Ukraine and reduced the number of sources of interference with the direct supply of gas to Germany. As we have seen, German’s elites under Scholz have colluded with the destruction of an energy system that operated very much in Germany’s favor, maintaining German rivalry with other global production centers, including the US.

The United States has been adamantly opposed to anything that would bring about a more harmanious relationship between Europe and the Soviet Union / Russia because a unified EurAsia would terminate US global hegemony. The founding father of modern Germany, Otto Von Bismarck, once observed that Russia and Germany were natural partners. And as Halford Mackiner, founding father of geopolitics, once noted, he who controls the continent of Asia controls the world.

Who Cares?

The decision by Ukraine to stop the flow of Russian gas from yesterday, January 1st, is one, we are told, that has long been anticipated (or perhaps we should say enthusiastically encouraged) by the European Commission and one that has been factored into current pricing.

Energy pricing across Europe is already tending upwards, and it is difficult to see how, whether anticipated or not, a 5% decline in the supply of gas to Europe (representing 40% of what was until yesterday the full spectrum of Russian gas supply to Europe, the other 60% accounted for by Russian gas flowing through Turkstream, or by costly LNG, or by third party sanctions-busters and the “shadow fleet”) can have anything short of a negative impact on European (and US) energy volumes, energy prices, and rates of inflation.

But Europe doesn’t care (does it?), or, rather, the unelected and unaccountable bureaucracies of the European Commission and of NATO - playing out agendas that support the empowerment and centralization of their respective institutional empires, under the tutelage of Ursula von der Leyen and Mark Rutte respectively, who nurture truculent anti-Russianism as fuel - they don’t care, presumably because they don’t care about European citizens, or Ukrainian or Russian or anyone’s citizens.

The Third Energy Packet

Europe’s beef with Russian gas turns out, at the end of the day, to be unrelated to energy specifically, or even to what is good for European prosperity, but to Europe’s ideological buy-in to a neonconservative globalist project whose purpose is the continuation of US hegemony.

Alongside US anxiety about growing European dependence on Russian gas as a result of Nord Stream, there has been equivalent European Commission anxiety about the “third energy package,” a campaign by the European Commission to enforce on Russia a scheme for the privatization and demonopolization of Russian energy exports - hitherto and still today controlled by Gazprom - a scheme that would of course open up Russian energy markets for exploitation by foreigners and reduce the price of Russian gas, already relatively low, for European consumers.

Although the pro-Western puppet, Yeltsin, had signed the third energy package it had never been ratified by Russia’s parliament.

The European Union's Third Energy Package is defined by Wikipedia as a legislative package for an internal gas and electricity market in the European Union. Its purpose is to further open up the gas and electricity markets in the European Union. The package was proposed by the European Commission in September 2007, and adopted by the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union in July 2009. It entered into force on 3 September 2009.

Yukos Litigation

The issue of the “third energy package” is at root about the imposition of the “rules-based” order of the collective West, and it is linked to pro-European legal rulings against Russia over the Yukos affair. This was explained in Frebruary 20214 by a legal source (Yukos) as follows:

“In the legal battle that has drawn attention worldwide for over a decade, the Amsterdam Court of Appeal today upheld the $50 billion arbitration awards in favour of the former majority shareholders of Yukos Oil Company, effectively dismissing the Russian Federation's last-standing challenge against the decision. This ruling is a decisive step in one of the most significant legal disputes in the realm of international arbitration. It also underscores the inviolability of international law and treaties.

‘Back in 2014, an independent tribunal in The Hague found the Russian Federation responsible for the unlawful expropriation of Yukos, once Russia's largest oil producer. The arbitral awards, demanding Russia to compensate the shareholders with over $50 billion, were based on violations of the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT). The Russian Federation has raised a claim to set aside the awards before the Dutch courts. After the rulings of The Hague Court of Appeal and the Dutch Supreme Court in 2020 and 2021, all but one setting aside ground were rejected.

‘The remaining setting aside ground that was now dealt with by the Amsterdam Court of Appeal, was the allegation that the former majority shareholders of Yukos had committed fraud during the arbitrations. In an extensively reasoned judgment the Amsterdam Court of Appeal found these allegations to be introduced at too late a stage, and also irrelevant to the original decision or insufficient to alter its outcome. The court's finding effectively reaffirms the integrity of the arbitration process and the finality of its awards.

‘With the dismissal of the Russian Federation's last ground for setting aside, the focus of the Yukos shareholders now shifts to the enforcement of the $50 billion judgment. This entails initiating proceedings against Russian state assets across the globe, an effort that is already underway with significant legal victories in England and the United States. These jurisdictions have recently rejected Russia's attempts to claim state immunity, thereby advancing the shareholders' efforts to secure recognition and enforcement of the arbitration awards”.

The Color Green

Perhaps somewhere in the medley of logic behind the shut off of Russian gas is is that of Green politics which rightly sees a major threat to the world from continuing fossil fuel emissions. But the collective West’s attacks on Russian natural gas notwithstanding, these emissions continue to climb relentlessly to what promise to be highly dangerous, toxic levels and possibly utterly fatal for humanity by the end of the century or soon thereafter. If such logics made any kind of sense there would be signs of this, first of all, in Washington, but whose incoming President dismisses global warming as a hoax, and the solutions being applied would not threaten nuclear war in the service of saving the world from climate catastrophe.

The Moldova and Transnistria Connection

In my post yesterday I discussed the implications of Ukraine’s cut-off of Russian gas with respect, primarily to Slovakia and Hungary. Bad enough.

But there is also the question of Moldova and this could be a short-cut to World War Three. The Ukraine cut-off also cuts off the supply of Russian gas to Moldova or, to be more precise, to the Moldovan power plant that is situated in pro-Russian Transnistria a secessionist strip of land that lies between Ukraine and Moldova.

The gas is used to generate electricity and now there will be no electricity from this source for Moldova. Transnistria has coal stocks that will keep the power plant going for another 50 days or so. Locked in, as it is, by hostile nations (Moldova itself, Ukraine, Romania), Transnistria will presumably find it very difficult to import fresh supplies of coal.

Moldova is expected to make up for the loss of electricity from Transnistria by importing electricity from Ukraine and from Romania.

The notion of Moldova taking supplies of electricity from Ukraine sounds absurd on the face of it, and probably is absurd. This is because Ukraine, having decided no longer to receive Russian gas (which it has been siphoning off from Russian pipelines the gas it needs and that has been paid for on its behalf by European customers) now faces a further energy catastrophe totally of its own making, in addition to the regular destruction of Ukrainian energy facilities by Russian drones, bombs and missiles.

Ukraine has already been buying copious volumes of electricity from Slovakia and Romania to make up for the damage to its energy infrastructure by Russia. But Slovakia’s prime minister Fico has warned Ukraine that Slovakia may no longer supply electricity to Ukraine, in retaliation for Ukraine’s shut-off of Russian gas to Ukraine. That would leave Ukraine dependent on Romanian supply of electricity.

In the context of such energy shortage, how, then, is Ukraine going to supply electricity to Moldova?

The situation for Transnistria, once it has exhausted its coal supplies, seems bleak. Russia may decide therefore to open up a new military front to the west of Kherson and carve out a route through west Ukraine from Kherson to Transnistria. Such a measure suggests the Russian conquest of Odessa, already home to a substanial Russian-speaking population,

If successful, then this would bring supplies to Transnistria but it would not in itself be able to bring electricity. Furthermore, the distance is over two hundred kilometers, far longer than the distance of fifty kilometers achieved by Russia in pushing its forces through Avdivka earlier in 2024 westerwards to where they are now in Novoselivka, on route to Pokrovsk.

The process would likely many months if not years even as a humanitarian catastrophe unfolds in Transnistria, raising the possibility that a safer outcome for its people would be an invasion, already threatened, of Transnistria by Moldova.

From Syria to Pakistan to China

The behavior and words of Syria’s de faco leader (by invasion), Jolani, the leader of former Al Qaeda/ Al-Nusra terrorist organization HTS, backed by Turkey, the US and, quite possibly, by Israel. suggest that we here encounter another likely Western intelligence stooge, a sleeper, a Manchurian candidate, an accomplished spy.

Extraordinary, isn’t it, that the leader of an extremist Sunni Islamic group that has benefitted from funds from the likes of the CIA and Qatar, yet is proscribed by the US as terrorist should, in a matter of days, even as his forces are killing former members of the regime, along with Christian Aramites and otehr minorities, be pronouncing a policy agenda that will benefit “free” trade, and “democracy,” and that will be so very friendly with Israel (ideologically its worst enemy, one might expect) and, of course with the US, and even wants, quite badly, for Russia to stay around.

I have recently posted about the role within, or fighting in association with HTS, of fighters of the East Turkestan movement, and of how these are possibly being lined up in collaboration with similar extremist Sunni movements across Central Asia ,to attack China by undermining Belt and Road initiatives as well as by fostering secessionist tendencies among the Uighurs of China’s Xinjaing province in the northwest of China.

The New York Times today carries an instance of this politics with reference to recent developments in Afghanistan, in an article by Zia ur-Rehman, inspired by recent airstrikes by Pakistani warplanes inside Afghanistan. Pakistani military have been targeting hide-outs of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, a militant group also known as the T.T.P. or the Pakistani Taliban that has carried out a series of terrorist attacks inside Pakistan.

The Taliban are accused by Pakistsan of providing sanctuary to the T.T.P., a charge that Taliban leaders deny. Pakistani officials defend the incursions into Afghanistan as essential to curbing T.T.P. attacks on Pakistani citizens and soldiers, as well as on Chinese nationals involved in projects under the Belt and Road Initiative.

A surge in attacks by the T.T.P. as they wage a bloody campaign against the Pakistani state, is said to have put immense pressure on leaders in both countries. In September 2023, Pakistan launched a crackdown on undocumented Afghans, deporting over 800,000 people to Afghanistan. Pakistan also tightened trade restrictions on landlocked Afghanistan to pressure the Taliban.

The Taliban may fear that a crackdown on the T.T.P. could divide their own ranks and push fighters toward the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan, known as ISIS-K, which poses a growing threat to the Taliban administration.

Pakistan had originally been optimistic that the new Taliban regime would rein in the T.T.P. expecting that the Taliban would reward Pakistan for the covert support it provided during the U.S.-led war. Instead, the Taliban’s rise revitalized the militant group, which has about 6,000 fighters. The Pakistani Taliban seized advanced U.S.-made weapons seized during the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, and released hundreds of fighters from Afghan prisons.