Speaking to reporters in Washington, Blinken boasted that the US is now “the leading supplier of [liquefied natural gas] to Europe.” In addition to shipping its own fuel to Europe, Blinken said that the US is working with European leaders to find ways to “decrease demand” and “speed up the transition to renewables.” “It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from [Russian President] Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs,” Blinken declared.
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DIANA JOHNSTONE—It cost billions of dollars to lay the Nord Stream 2 pipeline across the Baltic Sea, from near Saint Petersburg to the port of Greifsfeld in Germany. The idea was to ensure safe natural gas supplies to Germany and other European partners by going around troublesome Ukraine, known for readiness to use its transit rights to siphon off gas for itself or blackmail clients.
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GILBERT DOCTOROW—In recent articles I have made frequent references to the political talk shows on Russian state television as an invaluable source of information about the thinking of the chattering classes and, in particular of social and political elites close to the Kremlin. Even an acerbic academic from Rhode Island who left a nasty comment on my site about the value of my latest article on the shift from ‘special military operation’ to open war remarked in his closing sentence that he intends to follow more closely the Evening with Vladimir Solovyov program, especially when RT director Simonyan appears as a panelist. So I think I have made my point about television fairly convincingly.
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PEPE ESCOBAR—Now it’s painfully clear the imperial velvet gloves are off when it comes to the vassals. EU independence: verboten. Cooperation with China: verboten. Independent trade connectivity with Asia: verboten. The only place for the EU is to be economically subjugated to the US: a tawdry remix of 1945-1955. With a perverse neoliberal twist: we will own your industrial capacity, and you will have nothing.
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ANDREI MARTYANOV—In a nationwide address on Wednesday morning, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a partial military mobilization. He explained that the Defense Ministry has recommended drawing military reservists into active service, as the country faces a protracted conflict in Ukraine and Donbass. The measure is sensible and necessary under the circumstances, Putin stated, adding that he has already signed an order for the call-up to start immediately. The Armed Forces will draw on military reservists only, and those who have completed national service, the president added.
