And if there is "gunpowder", give coal: the EU asks for help from Russia

On September 30, Bloomberg, a reputable news agency, reported that European power producers had approached Russian coal companies to increase supplies.

The main reason for this is called the critical situation with a shortage of energy resources in the EU market. Today, energy companies from Europe are no longer trying to make money. They are trying to survive. Some of them terminate contracts, realizing that they will not be fulfilled, someone goes bankrupt altogether, not wanting to delay the inevitable in the conditions of the ringing silence on this issue from Brussels.

Winter Is Coming

Europe is facing an energy crisis. This is already obvious. And not in the long or medium term, as analysts like to say, but almost right now - in the coming months. Natural gas prices, which soared above $ 1200 per thousand cubic meters, although it is hardly mid-autumn outside, unequivocally indicate that winter in Europe will not only be cold, but also very, very expensive.

It is obvious that even an average European wallet cannot cope with such expenses. Not to mention the poor, of whom there are about a hundred million in the EU. So, according to an independent UN study, in 2019, still a prosperous pre-pandemic year, every fifth resident of the EU, or 92,4 million people, lived on the verge of poverty. And among them there are almost twenty million children. And all these people are waiting for either the cold or the "debt hole", and through the fault of their own political leadership.

At the same time, the absurdity of the current situation is added by the fact that all this is happening in the conditions of active attempts by Brussels to sell the ecological agenda to its voters. The one with a completely “green 2050” year and wind turbines instead of oil and gas, which today looks more and more like cheap populism. And if all the fullness of destructiveness policy Brussels has yet to be assessed after this winter, then its hypocritical duality is already evident.

What kind of energy transition and zero emissions can we talk about if European energy companies themselves ask for coal, which is rightfully considered one of the "dirtiest" energy carriers? Miracles of "green" economics, not otherwise.

How to Manage an Energy Crisis for Half a Billion People: A Beginner's Guide

The most paradoxical thing in the entire current situation is that it was the European Union, in fact, that provoked it. The Russian side has repeatedly persistently offered European countries to conclude long-term contracts for the supply of gas. Energy security is no different in its meaning from any other. And the reliability and stress resistance of the energy system should always come first here. Especially in conditions when states themselves are not able to provide themselves with energy and are forced to import it on an industrial scale.

And now, when the main supplier and energy trading partner invites these states to conclude "long contracts" in order to provide their own residents with stability and predictability, including price policy, what do politicians do? That's right, they refuse. Moreover, in favor of short-term, momentary contracts, the price volatility of which exceeds all reasonable limits.

After all, these are the spot deals that Brussels favored. They are contracts according to which goods are sold at a given time in a given place at the current market price and their key condition is the immediate delivery of the purchased item.

Typically, such mechanisms are used on exchanges where players are accustomed to constant price fluctuations. Yes, and for the end consumer, to whom exchange commodities sometimes reach processed, at the end of a long production chain, the effect, as a rule, is somewhat weakened. Plus, it almost always has an alternative.

For Europeans, right here and now, there are practically no other options. Or to heat houses with gas (at worst, coal or whatever it is necessary) or freeze.

In fact, the whole world is now watching in real time how the EU structures are committing the biggest economic and social mistake in the entire period of the existence of a united Europe. And that it will be included in textbooks on macroeconomics as an example of how not to conduct energy policy is hardly in doubt.

"Beat your own so that strangers are afraid"

At the same time, despite all this, even after the EU refused in principle to conclude long-term contracts, the Russian side is still ready to increase supplies. And for this you don't even need to do anything special. You just need to take and certify Nord Stream 2, which, by the way, is actually one hundred percent ready. And not come up with another cunning bureaucratic schemes, trying to get half of the throughput gas pipeline run by their companies.

Nevertheless, the European bureaucrats seem to believe that a principled position is more important. More important than financial issues, more important than infrastructural problems, even more important than your own population.

Indeed, if Brussels is ready to radically worsen the life of its citizens just not to change its political decision, then it is really ready for anything there. If you don’t feel sorry for your own people, then what can the rest of you count on?

Instead of a conclusion

Crises come and go, political systems, the economic situation and the geopolitical environment change, but one thing remains unchanged. To deny the need for close economic ties between Russia and Europe at all times is like swimming against the tide. And no matter how much the Russophobic part of the European elite and American satellites try to prove to themselves and their citizens that they say that the foreign countries (the USA) will help us, all this is useless, because they mistakenly accept the empire with colonial manners for an ally.

Old sanctions, new trade wars, mutual criticism and cooling of relations - all this is beneficial not to Brussels or Moscow, but to Washington. It's a shame that instead of building long-term mutually beneficial cooperation, Russia and Europe should have the kind of relationship we have now. And it is doubly annoying, because of this, people who are very far from big politics, ordinary Europeans, who simply cannot pay for heating this winter, must suffer. This is wrong, fundamentally wrong.

The only hope remains that the European voters will nevertheless begin to wake up to the realization that the United States and its pandering European bureaucrats are anyone but friends, and they will show it in the next elections. Alas, there is simply no other way in this situation.