Opinion: How Biden got caught in Russia’s oil and gas web — and who is paying the price – By Noah Rothman (MSNBC) / June 20, 2022
Today, Ukraine is absorbing much of the cost of the West’s hunger for Russian energy, but its people won’t be the last to suffer for our delusions.
Have the crippling sanctions imposed on Russia as a response to its war of conquest in Ukraine backfired on the West? That concern is being expressed across Europe and, increasingly, it is one that President Joe Biden’s administration shares.
Bloomberg News reported last week that the White House was “initially impressed” by the impact the post-invasion sanctions regime was having on the Russian economy and by Western firms’ willingness to voluntarily divest from the Russian marketplace. But, as that story points not, not only are those sanctions “exacerbating inflation” and “punishing ordinary Russians more than Putin or his allies,” the Russian energy sector — the country’s largest revenue generator by far — hasn’t suffered much at all.
To the contrary, as The New York Times reported last Monday, “Russia’s revenues from fossil fuels” have soared over the course of the war. While the country’s overall energy exports have declined by volume, the report notes that “surging prices have more than canceled out the effects of that decline.” The Kremlin is generating more revenue than it spends making war against Ukraine, and new, stricter sanctions targeting Russian energy that are due to come online soon may come too late to shape the outcome of that conflict.
