{OK, where are all those ships that transport LNG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquefied_natural_gas
and other fuels?
I’ve got a feeling they’ll be able to get top dollar for their products if Putin puts his plan into motion.}
Putin’s strategy to weaponize winter
Impatient to reverse course on the battlefield, the Russian president is signaling that Moscow fully intends to weaponize Europe’s winter energy needs — for not just Ukraine but the entire European Union.
Under the current circumstances, though, Russian ground forces may not make it to winter. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky possesses the Valyrian Steel sword; he just requires the Biden administration’s full confidence and support to wield it decisively and bury Putin’s “special military operation” in the fields of Ukraine.
… Putin is gambling on a brutally cold and snowy winter like that of 1941, which helped derail the German army’s attack on Moscow during Operation Barbarossa.
Theoretically, the Kremlin’s strategic aim is to produce an energy crisis in the dead of a European winter to break the will of NATO from continuing to militarily and economically support Kyiv.
The underlying assumption is that Europeans would choose warmth and comfort over Ukraine’s independence.
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The lynchpin to Putin’s “winterization” strategy, though, is energy — natural gas, and nuclear-powered electricity — and he needs a cold winter to play it.
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On Sept. 3, Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom announced it was shutting down the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which distributes natural gas to Europe through Germany, and that “the pipeline will not resume in full until the collective West lifts sanctions against Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.”
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https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/3635075-putins…