As a person living in the Baltics, I agree with Western countries using their leverage (including big tech) to put as much pressure as possiblee on Russia. We’ve been sincerely holding back and crafting sanctions that would only affect Putin’s inner circle for the last 8 years but it didn’t work. Now that the ordinary Ukrainians need to withstand the horrors of the actual war, ordinary Russians need to withstand stronger sanctions. It’s an unfortunate reality, the west just cannot keep financially supporting the Russian war machine, directly or indirectly through taxes.
Maybe as a person living in the Baltics you need to endure the cold and not fund the Russian war machine through natural gas. An unfortunate reality really
I agree with the notion of not relying on Russian gas. We've built liquefied natural gas terminal (https://enmin.lrv.lt/en/strategic-projects/gas-sector/liquef...) 7 years ago as Russia has been using gas as a political weapon against us constantly. We will endure what we need to endure to help Ukraine and we hope that ordinary Russians will do the same.
While this comment seems overly cynical, the fact that Europe depends to such a large degree on Russia for its energy needs is a big failure. Now that the cards are on the table we (as Europeans) need to take some hard decisions and face the consequences of our own complacency. Energy security and defence capabilities should be fully self reliant.
Right, you can’t say (paraphrasing here) “ordinary Russians must suffer for change to occur” while you’re literally paying a Russian state-owned entity to keep the heat on. Your government’s complacency partially funded this war and if you want to see people on the other side be punished for their mistakes you’d better own up to yours as well.
Baltics have LNG terminals and can fully supply themselves from alternative gas providers. Tell it to Germans who addicted themselves to the Gazprom drug needle.
Agreed, absolutely shameful of us to refuse to stop paying for russian gas immediately. That Russia not cut off the gas in response to the other sanctions shows how important that cash flow is to them, which is exactly why it must stop.
