As John reported last week, Russia has kept the Nord Stream 1 natural gas pipeline to Germany shut down for more than a week now. They originally claimed that they needed to close it for routine inspections and then claimed that the inspections had revealed a problem that needed to be addressed. Nobody was buying these stories. And even before the most recent shutdown, they were pumping less than one-quarter of the volume that had been flowing as recently as June. Yesterday, the Russians apparently decided to rip off the mask and just say what everyone was already thinking. The pipeline could be up and running at any time, but they are going to keep it closed entirely until the “collective West” lifts sanctions against them. So we’ve now reached the stage of open blackmail. (Business Insider)

The Kremlin has issued its sharpest comments about cutting off Russia’s natural-gas flow to Europe via the key Nord Stream 1 pipeline on Monday, saying supplies would not resume until the “collective West” lifts sanctions against Moscow.

“Problems with gas supply arose because of the sanctions imposed on our country by Western states, including Germany and Britain,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov during a conference call, Reuters reported on Monday.

“We see incessant attempts to shift responsibility and blame onto us. We categorically reject this and insist that the collective West – in this case, the EU, Canada, the UK — is to blame for the fact that the situation has reached the point where it is now,” Peskov added, per Reuters.

I’m being overly simplistic by describing this move as blackmail, though it certainly is. The Kremlin knows how reliant various parts of Europe are on that natural gas and they are nowhere near ready to be energy independent to the point where they could live without those supplies. But if we’re being honest, the west has been blackmailing Russia since the invasion began, believing that by isolating them financially from the rest of the world we could force Putin to withdraw his forces from Ukraine. This is all part of the modern interpretation of economic warfare and the Russians are clearly ready to play that game as well.

The hardest hit by this news will be Germany. Russia supplies more than 40% of the natural gas used in central Europe, with the majority of that amount flowing through Nord Stream 1. Germany became increasingly reliant on that gas as they moved to eliminate their own coal-fired generation and nuclear plants. They were already facing a significant energy crisis before Nord Stream 1 dried up.

Does the west really have the option of negotiating in this situation? All of those sanctions were put in place with the understanding that we planned to leverage the situation and convince Putin to withdraw his forces from Ukraine. Russia is still in the country and fighting in force, with no indication that they plan to leave any time soon. If we turn around and begin lifting key sanctions just to prevent central Europe from going dark and cold as winter approaches, Vladimir Putin will effectively have won the standoff, at least in terms of the ongoing economic warfare.

But failing to negotiate will leave our central European allies in a terrible bind. They’re already removing outdoor lights and regulating where people and businesses can set their thermostats just to keep the power grid from going fully to its knees. And demand will only increase as summer wanes and the colder months approach. Everyone seems to have assumed that we would eventually outlast the Russians and that their economy would collapse. But it turns out that they’re selling more oil than ever and finding other ways to adapt. Meanwhile, the entire world appears to be picking sides for what could become a new world war. Did Putin game all of this out before deciding to go into Ukraine? If so, we might be in a lot more trouble than some of us had previously anticipated.