If there were any other available sources for Europe to buy large quantities of gas they’d be doing it already. They’re already maxing out other sources of energy imports but the infrastructure just doesn’t exist to import the same levels of gas from anywhere else and it won’t exist any time soon. They get about 21% of their gas from Norway and if Norway could sell them even more I’m sure they would buy it.
Then again, you could still be on to something. Even if Norway (or whoever is in a position to sell) can’t export any more of it than they are now, making the shortage even more severe would increase profits.
You’d think the Russians, of all people, might have heard one or two stories about what happens to armies that go in with inadequate supplies and not enough time to wrap the campaign up before winter hits.
Judging from his autohagiography, I am going to say Snowden has that special sort of stupidity that clever people often have, an arrogant overinflated belief in being right and all others wrong.
To be honest, I didn’t read much of it, and I only read parts because a former boss gave it out as a Christmas present. The book was boring dreck.
Only a few T-90Ms have even been deployed to Ukraine, and as a result, some analysts have postulated that the 100 or so MBTs in service were being reserved for a possible escalation of hostilities with NATO on Russia’s western borders. It could appear that NATO will be able to discover crucial details about the tank that Moscow may have wanted to keep secret.
What this reveals is a disconnect between “eastern” and “western” ideas of elections.
In a democracy, an election is there to actually ask the people to choose, to not only get their honest opinion but to tell the voters that their opinion is actually valued.
In autocracies, on the other hand, elections are tools to force opinions on people. The idea is to make people say on the ballot what you want them to say. And then rub their noses in it, tell them that they voted for it.
The Lappeenranta-based newspaper Etelä-Saimaa reports on an influx of Russian families and groups of men to hotels in Southeast Finland.
Last week, two of the city’s hotels, Rakuuna and Lähde, reported receiving a flood of last-minute reservations. According to the paper, the hotels are now so fully booked they have begun adding booking requests to a waiting list.
According to a source, Russian tourists have been reportedly seen sleeping in the hotel corridors of a spa hotel in neighbouring Imatra, during the night between Monday and Tuesday.
They admit that the war is a meat grinder, because they say that perverts, ethnic minorities and other expendables should be sent first, before good, patriotic Russian men.
