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Western governments drop plans to cut Russia off from SWIFT – media
Washington still insists all options are on the table despite report
© RIA Novosti/Vitaly Belousov
German newspaper Handelsblatt has reported that Western leaders have ruled out the possibility of disconnecting Russia from the global banking interchange SWIFT. However, the US government has contradicted the assertion.
“No option is off the table,” a spokesperson for Washington's National Security Council told reporters on Monday.
The denial comes after Handelsblatt claimed that the US had, in fact, given up on the threat of removing Russia from SWIFT in talks with the German government. If the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication cuts ties with Russian banks, Germany would have no way of paying Moscow for its natural gas contracts.
It could also unleash a catastrophic rise in oil and food prices.
That must seem like a good plan to the US Deep Staters.
Instead, the Düsseldorf-based business daily reported that the US and German governments are discussing “targeted” sanctions against Russia’s largest banks in the event that Moscow “invades” Ukraine.
US intelligence has claimed for several weeks now that Russia is preparing an attack on its neighbor. Moscow has rejected the insinuations as “fake news.”
Germany has insisted that any sanctions include exceptions so that the import of oil and gas from Russia can continue, according to Handelsblatt. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected in Berlin on Thursday to discuss the sanctions proposal with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the paper added.
What a different world it would be if everyone spoke the truth!
An unusually intelligent decision for the EU
EU explains position on new Russia sanctions
Brussels will not impose pre-emptive measures in attempt to stop invasion of Ukraine
The EU’s most senior diplomat Josep Borrell has ruled out the introduction of “preventive sanctions” against Russia over the situation in Ukraine, clarifying that any measures would only be implemented in case of an actual attack.
Borrell’s comments come as tensions on the Russian frontier with Ukraine remain high and as Moscow stands accused of placing over 100,000 troops in the area in preparation for an invasion. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied these suggestions.
According to TASS, Borrell told the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs that the EU is preparing a package of sanctions that would be used to hit Moscow if it decided to invade Ukraine. However, despite cries from Kiev that Russia should be hit pre-emptively, Borrell revealed draft measures are being prepared but would only be implemented in case of escalation.
“Nobody has talked about preventive sanctions,” he said. “There will not be preventive sanctions … We are discussing about what to do in case that something happens.”
“To be prepared to act does not mean to act before it is needed,” he continued.
America has also threatened to hit Moscow with strong sanctions in case of a military incursion of Ukraine. Last week, a group of US senators from President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party introduced a bill containing possible restrictions to impose on Russia. Among other things, the bill proposes to impose sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. It also targets Russian banks and other industries.
Last year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on Brussels to apply pre-emptive sanctions against Russia, suggesting that threats of harsh measures after an invasion would be too late.
“A sanctions policy ‘after’ is no longer of interest to anyone, frankly,” he said. “We are in favor of a strong sanctions policy before escalation, so there may not be an escalation at all.”
Sanctions against doing something you are not going to do anyway, might very well backfire and result in doing the thing, since you are already paying the consequences of it. Zelensky should go back to his day job!
How the EU found itself excluded from talks on deciding Europe's future
Brussels is conspicuously absent from critical talks with Moscow
By Glenn Diesen, a Professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway, and an editor at the Russia in Global Affairs journal. Follow him on Twitter @glenn_diesen.
The EU has hit out after it was effectively excluded from security talks between Russia and the US. The fate of the world may have once been decided in Western European capitals, but now it seems to be out of their hands.
However, it seems increasingly clear that the bloc only has itself to blame for the fact its members no longer have a seat at the top table, leaving them the subject of discussions, rather than the driver of them.
A US-led Europe
In advance of the talks last week, Washington rhetorically agreed that European security cannot be decided over the heads of the EU and Ukraine, before then simply going ahead with the bilateral US-Russia format. Simply put, Washington cannot do diplomacy with Eurocrats in the room.
The first reason is that the credibility of US security guarantees is juxtaposed with compromise. In 1962, President Kennedy and the Soviet Union reached an agreement to resolve the Cuban missile crisis, which stipulated that the US would remove its Jupiter missiles from Turkey in return for the Soviet Union removing its missiles from Cuba. Instead of celebrating the diplomatic efforts that prevented nuclear war, the US conditioned the agreement on it being kept a secret. Kennedy lied to the US public and its foreign allies. For two decades, the US public believed that the crisis had been solved by confronting Moscow in an uncompromising stance, which made the Soviets back down and grant victory to the US.
Jack Matlock, the last US ambassador to the USSR, argues that the US similarly rewrote history by claiming that the Cold War was “won” by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, when in reality it was negotiated to an end in 1989 through compromise. According to Matlock, the consequence of US mythmaking is a national narrative in which peace is achieved by staring down and defeating its adversaries, while compromise is denounced as “appeasement.” Consequently, actual diplomacy and compromise must be done behind closed doors.
The second reason is that the foundation of “alliance solidarity” is always to stand united against the adversary, Russia, which ensures that the bloc can only speak in the language of ultimatums and threats. The main lesson from the NATO-Russia Council was that the 30 member states would agree on a common position before meeting Russia, at which point officials would not be able to alter the existing consensus. This eliminated the possibility for real diplomacy, as the format of negotiating from a “position of strength” merely implied that NATO would pressure or threaten Russia to accept its unilateral decisions. Both Washington and Moscow are aware that diplomacy and compromise can only be successful in a bilateral format.
No seat at the table
The EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, criticized the US-Russia format for discussing European security in its absence. Borrell argued that “the EU must be involved in these negotiations” as “European security is our security … It’s about us. This is not simply the case for two states, i.e. America and Russia, or NATO and Russia – even if Moscow imagines it.”
There is a certain irony to this statement, as the reason for this conflict is that the West has for the past 30 years unilaterally altered the foundations of the European security architecture over the head of Russia as the largest state in Europe. Legitimizing unilateralism by dressing up power politics in the language of “democracy” and “values,” Russian security concerns have been ignored for decades and pan-European security agreements based on the principle of “indivisible security” have been violated.
The EU and Russia reached the pivotal EU-Russia Common Spaces Agreement in 2005, which committed both sides to pursue integration efforts towards the common neighborhood “in a mutually beneficial manner, through close result-oriented EU-Russia collaboration and dialogue, thereby contributing effectively to creating a greater Europe without dividing lines.”
If the EU had honored this agreement and not attempted to marginalize Russia in the shared neighborhood, the current standoff with possible cataclysmic consequences would not have materialized.
Consequently, a divided Europe is destined to become increasingly irrelevant. Attempting to move the dividing lines incrementally towards Russian borders is fueling mutual sanctions and military conflicts, which results in Western Europe becoming more reliant on the US. Without strategic autonomy, EU-Russian relations will be hostage to US-Russian relations, to the extent the West Europeans have little to contribute. During the Cold War, the continent was at least the center of attention and a key priority for the US, while in the present era, EU members are becoming ever-more dependent on the US, which in turn is forced to prioritize East Asia as the center of gravity.
An unreliable partner?
Diplomatic relations between the EU and Russia have virtually come to an end, which suggests that the bloc is losing its relevance as an institution to organize pan-European security.
The EU prospered as a collective hegemony in the pan-European space, as it could act unilaterally and deter Russia from responding. As the world becomes increasingly multipolar, this approach has merely set the EU’s neighborhood on fire, which they then try to resolve by threatening and sanctioning Russia into making unilateral concessions. In a multipolar system, sanctions end up isolating the bloc as Russia continues to shift its economic connectivity to the East. The EU has exhausted the sanctions weapon, which is problematic when it is the only instrument in the diplomatic toolbox.
Even when Borrell came to Moscow in February 2021 to improve relations, the political imagination was limited to lecturing Russia and presenting the EU as a neutral and innocent party to a Europe in conflict. Amazed that Moscow did not accept the role as the civilizational student to the EU, Borrell returned to Brussels and advocated more sanctions.
When Russia proposed these talks to finally reach a mutually acceptable post-Cold War settlement, Borrell responded: “This is the first time that the Russians have put their agenda on the table in writing, in the form of a real treaty. This has never happened before. Only winners do that: To say that and these are my conditions.” Borrell went on to suggest that the point of departure in any discussions on European security should be to discuss Russian infringements, before outlining his plans to provide further military assistance to Ukraine.
The talks about pan-European security should have started 30 years ago, as constructing a Europe without Russia would inevitably become a Europe against Russia. There is an imminent need to revive the art of diplomacy, which implies that the EU’s presence will be counter-productive.
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Germany reveals when it will run out of gas
Natural gas storage facilities in Germany are half-empty, economy ministry says
Natural gas reserves in Germany, which has one of the highest underground gas storage capacities in Europe, have fallen to historically low levels compared with previous years.
“According to the consolidated register of gas storage facilities of the European association Gas Infrastructure Europe, Germany’s gas storage facilities are 50.6% full (as of January 11, 2022),” the German Ministry of Economy said in response to a deputy's request as quoted by RIA. “This corresponds to a theoretical working gas availability of 17.7 days,” it added.
This comes as Russian energy giant Gazprom said on Monday it has not booked any capacity to pump gas to Europe through the Yamal pipeline next month. The Yamal-Europe pipeline, which usually delivers Russian gas west into Europe, continued to send it eastward from Germany to Poland for a 28th successive day on Monday, data from German network operator Gascade showed.
The route between Poland and Germany had been operating in reverse mode since December 21, putting upward pressure on European gas prices.
Economists are warning of energy price spikes deeper into the winter, saying that Europe is yet to find itself physically short of gas during the current gas year, which began in October.
Overall, European storage facilities were 49.33% full as of January 12, according to Gas Infrastructure Europe. If the current rate of withdrawal is sustained, Europe’s reserves could be fully depleted by the end of winter delivery, it said.
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