The biggest retaliation the West can make right now is a commitment to a rapid exit at unprecedented speed from the oil economy, in favor of renewables.
This is happening because the west has no leverage and asymmetrical priorities. Russia -really- cares that Ukraine stays out of NATO, probably to the point where they would scorched earth the country before it joined, and the west only kinda cares about Ukraine comparatively, as demonstrated in 2014 and 2008. If they actually really care, sanctions don't mean much.
Makes me wonder why the west thought the third time would be the charm in this case. A big difference may be domestic politics in the west, things are pretty tenuous both socially and economically, which could benefit from this grandstanding far from home.
Russian oligarchs care about borders, trade routes, and cargo ships. It's about money and power. Russia obviously doesn't give a rat's ass about democracy, they have their population locked up tight.
They expect to move in, battle, secure new territory, deal with stern blabber and a slap on the wrist, and it'll be back to business as usual, with slightly higher profit margins.
There is no a lot of democracy in UA. Literally all opposition were shut down or applied sanction. No media other then telegram can work free. There is a big corruption on every level.
I dont like Russia or want them been there. But there is no such thing as single united Ukraine. Saying this is literally a crime and "putin propaganda"
There is and there could have been democracy and prosperity like in ALL, ALL of ex-soviet states that joined NATO and EU. All of those countries make Russia look like a shithole.
That's what got Putin so enraged.
NATO is a security guarantee without which there can be no foreign investment in this part of the world.
No, they hate all the states that were under their influence and that later joined NATO and EU for leaving them in the dust.
Ukraine prospering would be too much for Putin, it would expose his crooked path that he steered Russia.
Russia would be way ahead of Poland had Putin not taken power and made Russia an mafia-oil state.
It was a Bush related joke. But regarding what you wrote, Ukraine prospering doesn't seem very likely, it's much more corrupt than even Russia. Their GDP per capita is a third of Russia's, despite also having a wealth of raw materials.
So that's not the issue. The Baltic states have prospered, and joined Nato for that matter.
The problem is that Ukraine is a huge country with a pretty large population, plus it has very deep historical ties with Russia, so it's probably a bit of that too, losing ones brother to the enemy would hurt.
In order to use nukes effectively, you need to have second strike capabilities. You know, the 'M' in 'MAD'.
Ukraine in NATO means US nukes on Russia border, tipping the balance. It would be similar to Russia placing their bases and weapons into Canada or Mexico.
> Ukraine in NATO means US nukes on Russia border, tipping the balance.
No, it does not. A number of Eastern European countries are in NATO and none of them have American nuclear weapons.
Where does this silly idea come that after joining NATO, American missiles somehow appear in the new member? Modern-day NATO is a cooperation platform for joint exercises etc, not some missile club that starts delivering ICBMs every month.
So do not spread that NATO is just a defensive agreement. Say the truth: that it is a military agreement that can act offensively and aggressively without UN support based on geopolitical interests after exaggerating the situation in the news. About this: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/aug/18/balkans3
You missed the entire Cuban crisis and how the world was seconds away from WW3? We all would not comment here if Cubans would take 'can place nukes where they want' literally.
> No, it does not. A number of Eastern Europe countries are in NATO and none of them have American nuclear weapons.
Yet. There were murmurs about moving them from Germany to Eastern Europe.
Additionally - US has DCAs (Defense Cooperation Agreement; straightly bilateral, nothing to do with NATO) with most EE countries. Nobody knows, what they brought there, US is certainly not telling anyone. The nukes might be already there.
There are no ICBMS in Germany only tactical bombs... these have no military value, there only value is to say that European countries have shared nuclear deterrence.
And Russia is big, they have an immense second strike capability from land and from the sea. Wladiwostok is 8000km away from Kiev.
It has no military value because it's unthinkable to use them. Unlike strategic weapons of deterrence which are exactly meant to prevent unthinkable scenarios. We have them so the other side won't use theirs.
Tactical weapons are not deterrence but actually meant to be used. Nobody will use a tactical nuke for the can of worms it represents. Whatever target can be found for a tactical weapon, it's not important enough to justify a nuke and basically start WW3.. They're a leftover of 50/60s doctrine.
Strictly speaking, US doesn't need ICBMs in Europe, would be ineffective there... just enough weaponry to prevent Russia to use theirs for retaliation.
> Where does this silly idea come that after joining NATO, American missiles somehow appear in the new member?
It is not silly idea, it is Russian misinformation. "The corrupt fascist gay West we are under constant attack by wants to put army on our borders," except in nicer words.
Not sure what you mean. I'm just saying that obviously if Ukraine joined Nato, they would get (even more) missiles. The US has been arming Ukraine for a long time already, to the tune of hundreds of millions every year.
Trump's first impeachment was related exactly to this.
I would go further and suggest Putin's latest move made deployment of ICBMs somewhere like Estonia (which could theoretically have hosted them since the 90s) more likely, not less.
> Russia is powerless to stop this, since any attack on a NATO country would likely trigger a counterattack.
This is a game of “who blinks first”. I doubt normally US would use nukes to defend a tiny unimportant country like Latvia or Slovenia, if under attack. Russia knows this too.
Nuclear submarines are there to launch from as close to the coasts of the enemy as possible. Land bases are nice to have but not so important for ICBMs.
Ukraine wasn't going to be accepted into NATO anyway. They asked. Weren't accepted. Ukraine knows this, Russia knows this, NATO countries know this. It's just Russian excuse for propaganda reasons.
The real reason is that Russians consider Ukrainians "the same nation" and if Ukrainians entered EU or some sort of association with it, and got richer than Russians like Poles, Slovaks, Czechs, Balts etc. - it would be very bad for Putin approval in Russia. Russians would start to think "it could be us", "it could work without the tyranny".
So Putin can't let westernized, wealthy Ukraine to exist. Same reason he helped Lukashenko to stop revolution in Belarus recently.
The rest ("history" lectures, "NATO is encroaching", "Ukrainians are nazis and bombard Russian speakers in Ukraine") - it's just bullshit excuses. Don'r repeat them, please. You are helping an aggressive nationalist dictatorship murder people by accepting their excuses.
I don't think it is either or, NATO is just a symbol for western alignment which reaches the same ends you describe. Beyond whatever foundational context, the three conflicts related the Ukraine and Georgia were precipitated by this (specifically most recently with the Brussels summit in 2021) which suggests it is a very definitive line in the sand, regardless of whether or not it is the actual reasoning. This is the third time the west has tested that line, it is the third time Russia has responded in this way, and it will most likely be the third time the West does nothing but implement sanctions because it isn't as important to them as it is to Russia.
This isn't a justification for actions, it is about understanding the situation through the chaos.
> The biggest retaliation the West can make right now is a commitment to a rapid exit at unprecedented speed from the oil economy, in favor of renewables.
You can't exit from the oil economy with renewable such as wind or solar due to their non-predictability.
If you want to stop importing Russian gaz, you need nuclear energy.
(all numbers for germany)
Only ~14% of gas used is used for electrical energy. About 50% of the gas we use is imported from russia. 77% of the gas is used by households for heating (and also cooking, but that's negliable) and industry
To not depend on russian gas by reducing gas usage, the gas heating systems need to be replaced with heat pumps or something else and industry needs to shift, presumably to electricity (since it's unlikely that we have enough green hydrogen that's not produced from fossil fuels without depending on russia). This isn't going to be easy and unlikely to happen at a large enough scale in the next 5 years.
And even if it was nuclear is not a viable response with new projects taking decades to develop. Todays nuclear industry is delivering warmed-up 1970s technology that is expensive, slow, and inflexible.
Solar/wind/batteries with a small amount of backup capacity from hydro, power-to-gas/fuel, biofuels, or new long-duration storage is cheaper and faster to deploy.
You seem to be disagreeing with our greens. Gas is offered as the only backup source at that scale and timeframe.
>Solar/wind/batteries with a small amount of backup capacity from hydro, power-to-gas/fuel, biofuels, or new long-duration storage is cheaper and faster to deploy.
Wrong. [1]Nuclear wins out when kept open a bit longer and that is without accounting for storage methods. To say "a small amount of backup capacity" is absolutely ridiculous. The amounts we need compared to what is available right now would be massive. Most European countries aren't norway with loads of hydro capacity either.
Also power to gas/fuel is a pipedream due to inherent costs and losses alone.
You're better off making more pumped storage power stations like in Coo but those don't fit anywhere and aren't magical either.
The technology/resources for the storage required woudvtske even longer but you're right, we don't need new technologies, we should be serial building proven designs like CANDUs until SMRs hit stride.
You can with storage systems albeit with lots of constraints. Having nuclear is important to guarantee baseload, but we can't rely on that solely either. With current gen nuclear tech, well also run out of fuel within a few generations.
> There is no such thing as storage systems at wide scale unfortunately
I can’t find actual current annual production, only estimates for now and actual values for a few years ago, but we produced somewhere between 0.5 (what we did recently) and 1.3 TWh (what some people a few years ago thought we’d be at now) of batteries in the last year.
Given the likely usage patterns, this is already on a relevant scale to all 50 or so nuclear reactors currently under construction, and the expectation is that battery production will approximate rapid positive exponential growth at least to the end of the decade.
AFAIK the running out of fuel would be a non-issue with breeder reactors, which are disliked for the proliferation risk they are. Well, trade-offs.
Also: currently, nuclear fuel cost is a small part of running a reactor. If nuclear fuel follows a similar cost/available quantity curve as other geologic resources, we should be able to find more once we start looking in earnest.
Like Russia cares. They have a growing, energy-hungering neighbor (China) buying their gas in the east, and a Europe committed to reduce their gas and oil usage in the next 10 years in the west.
It is important to note that the gas exported to China and Europe are exported from different fields, and are not connected with each other. As it stands right now, Russia cannot export the gas it produces for Europe to China.
Yes it can, it just takes longer to put it in ships or trains. Transport by ship from where NordStream would leave the land to China is becoming feasible now that the north pole is melting, and Russia is really interested in that. A good, seemingly unbiased video on the subject is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvy9usF7ohE
I don't know about the trains but looking at shipping:
-Nordstream 2 has a capacity to transport 55 billion cubic meters per year[1]
-The biggest LNG transport ship "Mozah" built by Samsung Heavy Industries can transport a equivalent of ~162 million cubic meters in a single load
This leads to a ~339,5 full loads per year needed to replace the pipeline volume. Nordstream 2 probably wouldn't run at full capacity initially but even at 50% utilisation it would be nearly impossibe to replace it with shipping.
Putting gas on a ship where nordstream leaves land makes no sense at all if you want to ship to china. You’d have to navigate all of the Baltic Sea and then go all the way around either Scandinavia and Russia or via the Mediterranean. You’d also need to build a liquefaction plant to transport gas via train or ship efficiently. If you’d invest in that kind of infrastructure, build it somewhere more suitable.
They care deeply. China is >10x in pretty much everything. They don't to be a vassal state of China. Russia has lost the independence twice - threat from Asia and threat for united countries between Moscow and Berlin.
I'd speculate the whole action is to force the West to a new deal with Russia, so they can balance China.
> I'd speculate the whole action is to force the West to a new deal with Russia, so they can balance China.
I think any trust that Russia still enjoyed in the west is gone as of today. A few days ago the official Russian position was "Nobody is planning an invasion of Ukraine." Today, Russia has invaded Ukraine. This is not how you make deals.
If anything, I'd have thought it's likely to go the other way: China gets to play the relatively responsible global citizen that doesn't send in tanks to resolve its territorial claims. Also new potential export markets.
I thought Putin was doing the show of power for domestic consumption where he'd embarass the West by actually withdrawing the armies slightly after he promised and it'd all end in a summit with both sides claiming they 'won', but he's gone well beyond that now.
>I'd speculate the whole action is to force the West to a new deal with Russia, so they can balance China.
If they are serious about partnering with the west, they should have embraced reforms and become a member of NATO. The fact that they haven't is indicative of Putin's plan to counter the west. It's more likely they will partner with China just because Putin isn't thinking beyond that. He's 70 after all and they have no effective playbook against China (ala Foundation of Geopolitics against the west).
They tried that in the 90s. There are two problems. They don't want to be a colony for Western powers. Russia is a collection of a few different nations. You have to hold it by a strong hand, otherwise you have a civil war e.g. Chechnya.
So they want to do it now on partner relations with Europe. Russia will provide, natural resources, transportation link to Asia, you can relocate polluting factories to Siberia, you get access to our market and labor. Also, you we will provide security and balance China. You don't need those pesky Americans. In return Russia wants, capital, tech and modernisation of the country.
So Europeans, do you want EU from Lisbon to Vladivostok or war?
You don't partner with nations by forcing them into a corner. That's not partnership, that's conquest.
The USSR lost the cold war. The fact that they want to have their cake and eat it too is the root of the issue. The compromise to be admitted into the western system is actually pretty mild, and there are many strong nations within the western framework. Russia would have no problems operating on a similar level as Japan or France if they gave up their desire for geopolitical hegemony.
May be a large market for Russia, but China is completely invested in renewables. Just look at their pledged energy pipeline. No sane country builds new energy infrastructure not firmly anchored in renewables today.
And in the short and medium turn, Europe cannot get to renewables. Re-doing an continent's energy grid takes time. Also, remember that many water heaters and house heating systems run on gas. Switching these to electric will also take time.
There have been energy crisis in the past and most people survived it, albeit with major inconveniences. I would say that is a small price to pay for peaceful resolution.
Russia cares a lot about who its sells its energy to. China is a far worse trade partner than Europe.
Europe is easy to bully, it doesn't have a single voice and its pretty predictable which parts will have competing interests. China is not. Russia will lose a lot of its independence if it becomes beholden to China. That would be a bad endgame.
Europe is also beholden to public opinion that does not want increased energy prices. China doesn't care about that.
As a motivation that makes sense, but what alternative will Russia have? Do you think Russia is banking on Europe eventually lifting sanctions and purchasing gas again?
It's not a matter of "again". Gas purchases are not on the table as far as sanctions go. It's the other way around. The EU is afraid that if they impose serious sanctions Russia will cut off the gas supply. This will hurt the EU far more than it hurts Russia in the short term.
It is certainly a last resort option, but on the face of existential threat, denying Russia a major source of income to finance the war is a legitimate goal.
The major point of Nord Stream 2 was to remove this PoF.
That's the wrong perspective. You have to remember that even at the height of the cold war, the Soviet Union was still providing gas to Europe. This has always been the arrangement. Ukraine stopping gas is not denying Russia income. It's denying Europe a critical resource.
China will just press Russia into servitude by demanding lower prices (who else they gonna sell to). It's still going to ruin Russia and maybe China then remembers some of the ethnical-chinese regions of Russia that Putin just set a convenient precedent for.
They already have, Putin’s gas deals with China are ruinous for Russia, they even managed to sell it at a loss half the time. What a mastermind that guy is.
This is unfortunately highly unlikely. A lot of EU politics depends on the pockets of rich Russian oil firms.
Just look at Austria, very rich but obviously Russian run EU country. (latest prime minister got fired by Russians even though Russia cyberarmy helped him win the elections. They decided he was no longer as compliant, so they leaked data many years after elections, Russian scandals several years before that etc.). Raiffeisen bank in Austria, basically launders money for Russians over the last several decades, with no consequences to the chief officers.
Hungary is another good example.
Another Austrian neighbor, Croatia, not rich, and less influenced by Russians, had one of the biggest scandals ever when the biggest privately owned company in the Balkans (owned by a Croatian), that employs a massive amounts of Croatians, went bankrupt and could have been acquired by creditors (Sberbank and VTB Bank). I guess there was not enough Russian influence in politics and Croatian government put a new law immediately, so that this kind of takeover does not happen (Croatia nationalized the company).
> Just look at Austria, very rich but obviously Russian run EU country.
This is just nonsense. Austrian government is not by any means run "by the Russians". Russia has been trying to enlarge it's sphere of influence in the west for a while now (which is nothing exceptional geopolitically speaking) and has few retired politicians working in the Russian private sector (Schröder [DE], Schüssel [AT], Fillion [FR], etc.). But to say that Austria and others are "obviously run by the Kremlin" is a blatant lie.
Yes indeed, 'cleancoder0' seems to have gained their understanding of middle Europe from a Tom Clancy novel, or whatever.
For many of us in Europe, including Austria, peace with Russia is considered a very good thing, and a lot of us want it, having lived through the enmities of hate and spite that was hoisted upon us during the Cold War.
Imagine if, indeed, the economic powerhouse of Europe+Russia were allowed to happen. If only certain entities weren't so committed to profiting from the balkanization of everything, hmm...
All power blocks have large influences into each other. That is basically the definition of being powerful in international diplomacy. You just notice it less (or caring about it less) when it's your own block influencing someone else.
Kurz got booted because of run of the mill power politics and because his clique was arrogant, careless, not very effective and made more than enough enemies. No outside influence needed.
But its funny, russian propagandist standpoint is that he got ousted because he stood up to the EU:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAhtC20nqjk
It is extremely amusing to consider that - from an American perspective - it takes "Russian Interference" for Austrian politics to be so screwed up.
Such naiveté begets the truth, which is that Americans falling for this trope really know nothing about Austrian political habits, whatsoever.
Kurz fell because Kurz was dumb and corrupt from the very beginning, and his party simply incompetent, and we are all glad to have seen him in the rear view mirror.
In fact, American agitprop'ers may not know this, but crediting Russia with Kurz' dismissal only makes us more willing to make deals with the Russkies.
> latest prime minister got fired by Russians even though Russia cyberarmy helped him win the elections.
Actual source? This "russian disinformation" and "russian election manipulation" has zero credibility if you read and listen to anything other than CNN at this point. Please send me actual proof before making claims like this.
It's basically a Mexican standoff, right? In the timeframe of months to years, Europe needs to buy Russian oil and gas as much as Russia needs to sell them. Neither side can unilaterally break off the relationship without suffering massive harm. Getting to full energy independence with renewables is a project that will take a decade or more, not something that you can do in the timeframe of the current conflict.
If they can make it through this winter, there may be time before next winter to ship LNG there from the US. I know the US is expanding their capability of LNG shipping, but I don't know how the capacity compares to the size of the need in Europe. I think the question will be if LNG exports from other countries can make up the difference in time.
Not that I'm against nuclear, but getting to full energy independence with nuclear seems like it would need several decades as well.
For example, the Blue Castle project in Utah (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Castle_Project) started on the drawing board in 2007, started looking for contractors in 2016, hopes to start construction in 2023 and hopes to be fully operational in 2030. That is if construction is not delayed in any way, which seems unlikely given the schedule so far tbh.
The US alone has over 200 coal plants operating today, so even if the new nuclear plant would be on average twice as large you would need more than a hundred new nuclear power plants. It seems wildly unlikely that they could be constructed within three decades.
Also that is in the US alone, a country with a relatively large knowledge base surrounding all things nuclear. Most of the rest of the world has no chance of replacing even a fraction of their power generation needs with nuclear, so for them renewables will be the way to go.
China needs five to six years from starting to build a nuclear reactor to making it operational. I don’t see why western countries should be inherently unable to do this. They currently don’t want to (because they don’t need to and people dislike nuclear power).
China is at ~1.4 billion people, not even close to "most of the rest of the world". There are about 7.9 billion people alive atm, so that would make more than 80% of the worlds' population being outside China.
It's not idiotic. They are just friends with Putin. Just see where their former top officials are employed, how they torpedoed the Norway-Poland pipeline and how they were pushing Nordstream 2 even though everyone told them it will destabilize safety of Baltic states. It's not incompetence, it's too consistent.
I am hopeful about sanctions but I am afraid Germans won't allow ones that actually work.
Shutting down their nuclear plants for no good reason was certainly not in Germany's best interests. They will now pay dearly for that boneheaded decision.
Fortunately we have a friendly neighbor with plenty of nuclear power which renders germany's anti-nuclear stance into a political play with a side dish of market consolidation.
Fission is obviously no clean energy. The previous posts claiming neutralizing nuclear wastes in 600 years was a solution was absurd. But yeah, completely decommission nuclear power plants now for sure would be controversial. But I'm in no position to judge that decision. It's all about trade off, but for what is a question.
Yeah, there are no guilt-free answers when it comes to base load generation, and fission is no exception.
But when the plants already exist and you shut them down because the Japanese decided to build one in a tsunami-prone seismic zone, hire a corrupt organization to operate it well beyond its intended service life, and install backup generators in the basement, or because the Soviets built one and operated it under the "Hold my vodka and watch THIS" school of engineering, well... those just aren't good reasons, and also not the kind of thinking I expect from the Germans.
France's modern plants should help, but they won't come online for years.
How do you do that? The reason europe needs russian gas is precisely because renewables are very intermittent, and they use gas to compensate. More renewable means more reliance on gas, unless you build nuclear plants. And if you do, you might as well not build renewables because the cost of nuclear is pretty much the same whether you use it or not.
The reason europe uses gas isn’t even electricity, it’s mostly heating and industrial.
For instance in france’s energy budget nat gas is almost as large as the entire electricity production. The policy over the last few decades has been to put everyone on gas distribution networks and encourage switching furnaces (from furnace oil, tbf).
For an other example, nat gas accounts for 13% of germany’s electric production (out of about 600TWh). In accounts for nearly 25% of the primary energy mix (out of about 3700TWh).
Even assuming all the gas plants are simple cycle peaking plants with horrid efficiency (say 20% which is extremely low even for peaking plants), electricity still would account for about 40% of germany’s nat gas consumption.
In reality, much as in france, the vast majority (~75%) of nat gas goes to heating.
Many countries could also source fossil fuels from friendly allies. But those allies would have to be interested in extracting it from their own sources.
From my stand point, and this will be very unpopular here, the push to rely on the unreliables (a better name for the renewables) has been toxic and is a destabilizing force in the world.
As is becoming painfully clear right now, relying on other countries for your energy needs is also unreliable. You just get unpredictable and large supply shocks every few years instead of smaller predictable ones every night.
Building out grid level energy storage looks like a way better solution than hoping the countries which are allies now will remain so indefinitely.
Many of the countries that can afford to do this already have fossil fuel reserves that they could use should they choose to. Even of the countries that could pay for this abusrdly expensive project - this will require mining rare earth elements that the green movement will never tolerate.
Did you know that the fossil energy sources are also intermittent? No energy plant is ever working 24x7x365. Stop with the fud already. There are real concerns with solar and wind that could be ameliorated with small scale storage, nuclear, geothermal and hydro. But to call them toxic and destabilizing is patently untrue, the destabilizing factor is not renewable energy.
The dream of any kind of small scale storage hinges on mining rare earth elements at a scale that no environmentalist will ever support. The greens will fully reverse course here once it becomes clear what kind of activity is required to make that possible.
I call them destablizing because the unjustified attacks on fossil fuels have delivered free countries into the economic hands of despotic regimes.
That the attacks are unjustified is arguable. The problem is not the attacks on them, but the politics. If Europe is still consuming fossil fuels they could still produce them and source it elsewhere and not buy it from Russia.
In addition, without renewables, the situation would be similar as Europe would still have near 100% fossil fuel energy production (except France).
Nuclear could potentially have changed things, but that's not related to the attack of fossil fuels. That's again politics and perception.
I agree than many times the "greens" cause more trouble than solutions, and that, again, is politics.
Well a car was less reliable than a horse. Cars were destabilizing. (No pun intended) but cars kinda worked out. Unreliables will get more reliable, these things take time.
> a rapid exit at unprecedented speed from the oil economy, in favor of renewables.
In the United States alone we would have to *sextuple* our renewable energy sources just to make up for our usage of fossil fuels. That is not something any country can do "rapidly", and even if it became a primary focus it would consume a significant portion of our GDP for years on end and be the largest infrastructure project the US has ever engaged in.
It seems almost ludicrous to categorize such a reaction as a "retaliation".
China benefits most from the electrical energy economy. Let that sink in. The reason why we arrived at today is people not thinking through the effects of their actions and desires.
China have invested strongly in electric tech for their own reasons - pollution and of course they also see climate change as a massive threat.
That the US in particular has been extremely late to the table is unfortunate but hey - what else do you expect when policy is bought and paid for by incumbents and one of the to political parties are 100% owned by Fossil interests.
Sanctions barely work on small countries. They're but a nuisance for mid-sized countries and do approximately nothing to big countries. Russian economy is mostly autarkic - consuming overwhelmingly goods and services produced within Russia. Their exports are energy commodities, not consumer goods - energy commodities are the bedrock of the modern world - they'll always find a buyer at market price or slightly below. Their national debt is negligible. China is not going to stop exporting their goods there, and I don't see corporations like Apple/Google/Volkswagen/Toyota giving up such a large market just to make a point. Token slaps on the wrist for the few selected oligarchs who haven't secured British citizenship yet are laughable
We should be honest to ourselves - short of Western citizens dying on the battlefield, there's nothing of consequence the West can do. Russia exploited our weaknesses really well - our irrational hesitance of nuclear energy, our greenwashing of natural gas, our love for petrol-guzzling SUVs, kowtowing of our financial system to ultra-rich, profit-uber-alles of our corporations, hypocrisy of our diplomacy, etc.
Not only that, US has been ripping off other countries using US$ for a very long time. And that why lots of countries now try to establish treaties of currency exchanging and reduce the usage of US$.
Do you think Putin did not take this into account? Europe has messed with herself and her dealings with Russia for so long that we are totally utterly self-screwed (renewables… tell that to the 400EU/MWh).
Like with China. Look: as a protest for the Uygurs, the US did not send… diplomats!
Russia’s exports are >50% oil and gas products.
The biggest retaliation the West can make right now is a commitment to a rapid exit at unprecedented speed from the oil economy, in favor of renewables.