The Duran Podcast - EU wants to PUNISH Russia and wants Russian gas

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

EU wants to PUNISH Russia and wants Russian gas

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the next EU sanctions package, which I believe is going to be revealed any day now, but it's going to be approved on February 22nd or 23rd, so it can coincide with the fourth anniversary of the special military operation, because you've got to have the media optics, of course. But they've got the package pretty much prepared. They're going to go after Russian aluminum and fertilizer. Xbox and PlayStation consoles. And they're not going to touch LNG, or they're going to let the LNG kind of slip through,

which is very interesting. On the flip side, you have Denmark giving permission, giving a permit, I believe, two gas prom, so that they can maintain whatever's left of Nord Stream, which is interesting. And you also have a Financial Times article talking about, What if, what if there is a deal or ceasefire or something? What if something happens to resolve the conflict in Ukraine?

Maybe we can restart our cooperation with Russia on the energy front. So you have two different things going on. What are your thoughts on? Well, what is happening is that Ursula and her allies, who still have the ascendancy, are going full steam ahead. They're still trying to sanction Russia into crisis, as they say. They're trying to stop aluminum import and station exports. I mean, it's an always comic thing, actually.

And especially if I have to say, after the deep strike revelations in with China, with which Russia now has extremely good economic relations, that they continue to think that this is going to somehow. effect or demoralized of Russians. I mean, most people are. But anyway, they're still insisting on maintaining the momentum with respect to sanctions. And by the way, there will be more sanctions on the famous Russian Shadow Fleet, which we're hearing all about. And already, by the way, we see that oil importers from Russia are starting to prepare moves to counter this. They're starting to agreed to accept insurance for ships from more Russian insurers, and they'll start setting up

their own insurers, and all kinds of things will be happening very soon to try and get around this. But the momentum from the EU, from the EU leadership continues exactly as always. But alongside that, they're now started to come up against counter pressures. And they're not counter pressures that are coming just from Hungary and Slovakia and, you know, the awkward squad. Because there's been a recent discussion and analysis of what's going on with LNG. And it's becoming increasingly clear that Russia is gradually becoming the dominant supplier of NNG to Europe. And there is no restriction. at the moment, in theory, on LNG imports from Russia to Europe, though Ursula says that she wants

to change that. And some European countries, notably Germany, insist that they do not import LNG from Russia and that LNG cannot enter Germany through German ports, Russian LNG. But of course, it is actually doing so. And there'd been studies about this, and unsurprisingly, just as with the so-called Shadow Fleet, workarounds are being found, so it is with LNG. So, in fact, Germany imports quite a lot of Russian LNG. Perhaps imports more Russian LNG that imports American LNG. There are some suggestions that this might even be the case.

But what they are doing is that they're importing it through various other ports and other EU countries, and of course it's then being whitewashed, as it's called, then being called something else. And apparently this is now happening on an ever bigger scale. And at some point, according to the Financial Times, and it's not clear exactly how this happened, but apparently there was a meeting presumably in Brussels where some people from some of the member states, and we're not, as I said, talking about Hungary, and the Slovakia, and they came along and said, look, this really isn't working.

What we need to do, as soon as the war is over and there is a peace agreement, we need to go back to the Russians and restart pipeline imports. And all of this, this article in the Financial Times has appeared at precisely the moment when completely unexpectedly, Denmark confirmed that they'd come to a deal with Gasprom for Gasprom to start taking steps to secure and preserve the Nord Stream pipelines, one of which, of course, is still intact. We don't know how extent to the damage to the other pipelines actually is. So it is looking as if someone at some level, somebody quite senior and someone quite

Quite, you know, with quite a lot of power, presumably someone in Germany is now making decisions that the pipeline network needs to be preserved because they're hoping that at some point soon, it has, it can be turned back on. And the Financial Times article says that the people who are advocating this, and they're very unclear as to who these people are, although they accept that they are, some of them German, that they're saying that it really doesn't make sense, what we're doing. This expensive LNG isn't really effectively replacing cheap pipeline gas from Russia. is causing a major competitiveness crisis, is putting Europe in an impossible economic condition. We might therefore need to look beyond it. Now, unsurprisingly, Ursula, the European Commission, are apparently horrified and they're pushing strongly back.

And of course, the Scandinavian countries and the Baltic states, the hardliners, in other words, are doing it. the same. So the cracks are starting to appear. They still go through the motions of waving these sanctions through. But increasingly, sanity is beginning to cut through whether it will be enough, whether it will lead to any kind of change. That, of course, is a completely different matter, whether the Russians will be interested in supplying pipeline pipeline gas again. All of this is completely uncertain. But it does look as if somebody somewhere in Berlin or Frankfurt or somewhere is now starting to say, look, this has gone as far as it can.

It's now doing real damage and we've got to stop. I believe you're right. I don't know who this is in Germany or who these people are in Germany that are trying to push for some sort of a resumption in the gas to Germany via Nord Stream. But I imagine that they are saying this is crushing our economy. Ursula is saying, crush the German economy, crush the German economy. Meanwhile, these people are saying, Ursula, we can't crush the German economy. It's already being crushed. We need to stop. But I believe there may be another reason that there's some very powerful people in Germany or forces in Germany that are trying to resume Nord Stream.

And I believe that reason could lie with the rise of the AFDE. I wouldn't be surprised if there are some people who are saying, you know what, we've tried everything with the AFTA. We've tried everything to try and stop their momentum. How can we really stop their momentum? We've got to get the economy back on track. We've got to get prices down. We've got to get the businesses back up and running.

get the business is competitive. How do you do that? Your only option is Russia. I mean, I don't know. That to me makes sense, yeah. I am absolutely sure you are right about this. And of course, that again takes us back to this gives us a clue as to who it might be. Who is starting to take these steps?

Well, I'm going to guess at the DDUTSU, people within that. Because, I mean, the IFDA is the big challenge to them. The CDUCSU has historically been the party of German business. They're supposed to be very close to the business community. They have publicly taken very hard line on Russia and on Ukraine, but they're looking at a crisis in Germany. And they're saying this can't go on. And obviously they're facing the challenge of the IFDA.

and they're saying, you know, this has got to end. This is, we lose, we risk losing the whole game in some way. And since everybody expects the CDU-CSU to form the next government in Germany, you can imagine the German civil servants, because this is presumably where this is coming from, who are very close, many of them anyway, to the CDU, CSU. Remember, the CDU is the dominant party, political party, Germany. It has formed the government for much the greater period of the Federal Republic, that it's people like that coming up to Brussels and are saying, well, you know, we've got to rethink

this, we've got to look at this, and they're probably also the people who are contacting Denmark and doing that kind of thing. Now, you know, I want to stress, nobody should make any assumptions that there is going to be a huge big fee change here. But it is, it, it, it's a, you know, It wouldn't surprise me and it would make perfect sense. And it does demonstrate that the cracks are starting to show. And it also demonstrates that the strains in Germany are growing. So if the sanctions go through, which I imagine they are going to get passed and approved in February, what happens?

Well, what happens? I mean, they go through. They make absolutely no difference. But these carry on as normal in terms of the Russian economy. How do they affect Europe? I mean, you're talking fertilizer, aluminum. I was reading an article about diamonds. When they place the sanctions on diamonds in Antwerp, it's really crushed the diamond industry. Absolutely. I mean, what happens to Europe when these sanctions get approved? Well, they're going to make things worse. I read the same article, I'm sure that you did about sanctions.

It's going to make the whole situation in Europe worse. The restrictions on fertilization, the from Russia. I mean, you know, the big players in the world fertilizer market are Russia and Belarus. Just say, so you sanction them. That's going to put further upward pressure on food crisis. It's going to increase inflationary pressures, cost of living problems right across the EU. But Ursula, who is running an ideological project, just doesn't see that. And just as she's apparently furious about these proposals to go back to Russian pipeline gas, and remember she's from the CDU, by the way, she's going to fight this every inch of the way, and so will the European Commission.

And, well, we'll see how it plays out. But the sanctions more of the same as far as Russia is concerned. Russia has shown a great ability to diagnose. diversify its exports. It's just going to increase the pressures and the crisis within the European economy. Well, what happens to the EU? Let's take this a step further. They're sanctioning Russia, they're cutting off all the things that Russia gave them and gives them, hurting their own economies, while they're also going to have to deal with tariffs from the Trump White House. I mean, why would you put yourself in this type of position?

position. It seems to me like the EU is fighting a war on two fronts. Well, they're fighting a war. Or is about to fight a war on two fronts. They're fighting a potential war on three fronts because, of course, normally they put all their face in imports of USLNG. But I'm kidding, reading lots of reports now that despite everything that Trump wants to do over the next couple of years at least exports of oil and gas from the US are going to platter. So they, and might even fall. And nobody should be in any doubt about this. If Donald Trump, whose priority is to bring down living costs in the United States wants to restrict LNG exports, he will do it. I don't have any doubt about that at all, by the way, despite what he says about

flooding the world with cheap USLNG and oil. That is what his policy of tariffs tells us. So a wise commission, a contradiction in terms, but an oxymoron, you might say, but a wise European Commission would be thinking about those things and will be saying to themselves, look, you know, we can't continue this trajectory. It is taking us down into crisis. We've got to start hedging. We've got to think about how we need to start reopening commercial and business links. But of course, they're not going to do that because these people don't think in those sort

of terms. They are a purely ideological centralizing project. And they're not ultimately held accountable for the effects of what they do. So if there is massive deindustrialization in Germany, if there is a huge surge in employment, if all of those things happen, it doesn't directly affect the commission officials because they're not elected. Yeah, but it affects the people. It affects the people.

Well, that is why, that is why you should never create a supranational entity like the EU to run your affairs in that kind of one. True. All right. We will end the video there at the durand. Dot Locals.com. We are on Rumble, Odyssey, Bichu, Telegram, Rock Finn, and X. Go to the Duran shop, pick up some merch like what we are wearing in this video update.

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