According to the newspaper, the Russian Federation did not inform the Polish side about the reasons for the suspension of supplies. A crisis group has already been urgently convened in the Polish government.
This is not only a blow to Poland but to other European countries that rely on the gas that travels through the pipelines in Poland. The Germans and French will be taking more cold showers in the coming days. Even in the summer, icy water is not always refreshing.
Besides turning the economic screw on Europe, Russia is sending a clear message with bombs and missiles–the Russians blew up key railroad junctions west of Kyiv, effectively cutting the ability of moving any tanks or heavy equipment to the east.
Jacob Dreizin provides important insight into the technical implications of this strike:
Russian cruise missiles destroyed a total of six traction substations within the Ukrainian rail system, paralyzing electric train traffic (and thus, all rail traffic) in western Ukraine.
Traction substations house transformers that take power from the grid and convert it to the voltage, amperage, and frequency needed to drive electric train motors through overhead lines or (more often) third rails.
There are three ways to move military materiel to the Ukrainian soldiers getting pounded in the Donbas–air, railway and trucks. Ukraine has no air assets to move such equipment. So scratch that option. Rail transport was a possible option until today. But the eight railroad junctions suffered serious damage and are inoperable for the near term. Can they be repaired? Sure, with time and the necessary material. But Ukraine and NATO have yet to come up with a solution to stop the Russian aerial onslaught of cruise missiles. If we rebuild it the Russians will destroy it again.
That leaves trucks. Forget about it. The Ukrainians do not have enough trucks to carry out a significant resupply and any sizeable column of trucks will face the same fate as the railroad junctions. They will be destroyed enroute.
In the bombshell news of the week, Russia’s Gazprom natural gas exporter, exactly has promised, is shutting off gas flows to nations whose gas importers refuse to pay for gas in Rubles.
Gas flows for Poland and Germany are halted as of today, confirmed by Bloomberg and other outlets. Poland’s officials are currently in a state of hilarious denial, claiming they have enough “reserves” to keep gas flowing into “homes,” but utterly failing to mention there won’t be enough gas to power the electricity generation hubs or industrial customers that keep the country’s economy flowing.
The situation is even more dire in Germany, where officials there have agreed to export “tanks” to Russia, even though they aren’t even really tanks. As I posted on Telegram earlier today:
Germany’s “tanks” that are being donated to Ukraine are nothing more than STEEL COFFINS for Ukrainian soldiers. First off, these aren’t tanks at all. They are tracked, short-range anti-air systems that NOBODY in Ukraine even knows how to operate. Via previous post, TRAINING time to run these is 6-12 months. There will be NO spare parts if they are damaged. NOBODY in Ukraine knows how to repair these units. It’s all a hilarious, pathetic JOKE on the part of Germany. Dragged out of a museum!
It appears that Germany is emptying its war museums of old hardware while demanding Russia keep selling it gas in euros, even though Germany and other Western nations have declared Russia can no longer use euros or dollar, due to the extreme economic sanctions leveled against Russia (by the West).
These bully tactics of the West are turning out to be disastrously catastrophic for Western nations, and Germany faces the near-total annihilation of its industrial base if it can’t somehow replace Russia’s natural gas deliveries (or find a way to pay in Rubles). The collapse of German industry will take a generation to recover, if ever, since shutting down manufacturing businesses and liquidating their assets usually involves selling off hardware and losing the human knowledge base of how to run that hardware.
All this for virtue signaling against Russia, it seems. Germany would rather commit economic suicide than allow Russia to earn another Ruble in revenue for its gas exports. Not that Russia is desperate for revenues, of course, since Russian energy sales are booming and year-over-year revenues for Russia are exploding to the upside due to sharply rising energy prices on the global market. China, Turkey, India and most other nations around the world are happy to keep buying energy from Russia, even if Germany, Poland, the UK and the USA refuse to do so.
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