Oil and gas embargo for Russia: break the entire supply chain
Embargo on Russian oil and gas is a necessary but painful step that is going to raise energy prices even higher. Many European countries are not ready for that (at best, they promise to reduce their oil consumption by the end of 2022). However, to stop the Russian war machine, one needs to look not only at the revenues that Russia gets from its energy sales but also at how it spends its revenues. Namely – Western countries should force Russia to spend this money only on goods of humanitarian nature instead of tanks and bombs. Below VoxUkraine provides the details.
In Economics 101, international trade is sometimes explained as a replacement of technology: for example, selling wheat and buying metal is equivalent to having a technology that turns wheat into metal. Russia now has a technology that turns oil and gas into tanks and missiles that it uses to kill Ukrainian people. This technology is enabled by Europe which not only applied very mild sanctions to Russia when it launched the war on Ukraine in 2014 but actually increased its dependence on Russian oil and gas over the past eight years. Today, Europe buys 20% of its oil and 40% of its gas from Russia.