Russia and the EU have entered into a clinch on the main issue in their relations – gas
Image source: cdn.fishki.net
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered that Gazprom’s contracts with those unfriendly states that refuse to pay for gas in rubles be terminated. The leaders of the largest EU countries said they would not buy Russian currency to pay for gas. For them, this is impossible for worldview reasons: it is Russia, as a raw material periphery of the world economy, that should buy euros and dollars, because the US and the EU are the center of the world and the “salt of the earth”.
If the payment of bills for Russian natural gas from April 1 is not made from ruble accounts in Russian banks, then this will be considered a default by buyers under concluded contracts, Putin said on March 31.
“No one is selling us anything for free, and we are not going to do charity work either. That is, existing contracts will be stopped. I emphasize again: in a situation where the financial systems of Western countries are used as a weapon, when companies from these countries refuse to fulfill contracts with Russian banks, enterprises, individuals, when assets in dollars and euros are frozen, it makes no sense to use the currencies of these countries,” says the Russian leader.
After the European Union banned the transfer of euros to Russia, its demand to pay for gas in rubles looks like a matter of course. How else? Don’t give it away for free?
However, the leaders of the largest EU countries categorically rejected the Russian condition: it is impossible for Europe to buy rubles – and that’s it!
“It [in the contracts] says that payment is made in euros. Sometimes in dollars, but usually in euros. I clearly stated in a conversation with the Russian president that it will remain so,” said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. French President Emmanuel Macron, in a conversation with the Russian president, personally told Putin that it was impossible for France to pay for gas in rubles.
It should be noted that this is not a single European position. Slovakia and Bulgaria have declared their readiness to pay for gas in Russian currency, and Hungary’s position is ambiguous. However, the main EU countries reject all arguments of reason with such dogmatic obstinacy, the word they are not Germany and France, but Poland and Lithuania.
How can one not recall the recent statement by Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki that the Polish approach to Russia, which was previously considered Russophobia in Western Europe, has now become a commonplace.
However, Morawiecki overestimates the influence of his country. Western European cartoonists and Poland itself are portrayed as a terrible unshaven man in a quilted jacket who knocks down European “skittles” with a bowling ball, that is, undermines the unity of the EU. The Poles for the “old” Europeans are the same “savages from the east” as the Russians. They are also subject to the arrogance of the founders of the European Union.
This arrogance is the key.
It is unthinkable for Europeans to buy rubles, because for a long time it was believed that the US and Europe are the center of the world economy, and Russia is the periphery, and therefore only Russians should buy dollars and euros, and not vice versa.
One thing needs to be known about the position of the EU countries on gas: they are intoxicated by their liberal ideology and their selfish worldview, according to which they are the “salt of the earth”. It is impossible to neglect the irrational motives in their behavior, given the role played by dogmatism in the politics of the European Union – the notorious “European values”.
The USSR was also an ideocracy: if we evaluate the decisions of the Gorbachev Politburo on the basis of national interests, logic, pragmatism and common sense alone, then it is impossible to understand why these people behaved the way they did, and why the Soviet Union collapsed.
For Western Europe, buying the ruble is unthinkable. For Eastern – too, but for other reasons.
In any case, according to the liberal economic theory that is true for all of them, Russia is a collapsing economy that could not enter the European Union and switch to the euro and, accordingly, lost its place in the sun. And the ruble is the weakest, worthless and overwhelmed currency that does not circulate anywhere outside the country.
Buying rubles from her for the eurozone countries is like buying an Indonesian rupiah.
The collision of the imaginary picture of the world of Europeans with the objective reality, in which Indonesia is the fastest growing economy in the world, which will soon overtake Germany in terms of total GDP, and brilliant Europe is critically dependent on Russia with its despicable ruble, will be painful.
You will have to freeze, sit without work, without electricity, think about what all this escapade against Russia in general and its national currency in particular was for.
Hard? Yes. But this is the only way drug addicts are returned from pink hallucinations to reality.
Alexander Nosovich, Rubaltic.Ru
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