Irish Examiner View: Europe must up the ante on Russian sanctions

Countries such as India probably calculates that if Europe is still prepared to buy energy from Russia, then why on earth shouldn’t they?

Russian president Vladimir Putin’s calculation that the West collectively lacks the resolve to challenge his dominance of the energy markets has been proven correct so far. Picture: Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP

When the European Council meets today, with Joe Biden in attendance, senior politicians must face the reality that sanctions have failed to curb Russia’s murderous assaults on a civilian population.

Russia has not yet defaulted on its sovereign debt, despite predictions to the contrary. It is feeling sufficiently bullish, despite a significant loss of the rouble’s international value, to reopen the Moscow Stock Exchange for bond transactions. Fossil fuel revenues are still flowing in, and there is growing disunity on further action, led by the Germans and the Dutch, with the Italians tucked into their slipstream.

EU nations give Russia €520m per day for oil and gas, and a shortfall is offset by Asian countries such as India which probably calculates that if Europe is still prepared to trade, then why on earth shouldn’t they?

While most of the world’s nations — 143 out of 193 — voted for a resolution in the UN’s General Assembly condemning Russia, the 35 countries that abstained include China, India, Pakistan, and South Africa, as well as several African and Latin American states. 

These and many more countries — including several that voted in favour of the resolution, such as Brazil — have strongly criticised the sanctions against Russia and can be expected to continue trading with Putin. It’s a strange, and unsuccessful, form of isolation when some of the world’s largest economies ignore the West’s campaign.

It is difficult to think of an example where economic sanctions have brought a major power to its knees and forced policy and regime change. The obstacles to Russian progress so far have been the courage of the Ukrainian defence forces and the provision of weaponry to them.

If Europe and Nato continue to fiddle around the edges of this dilemma, then it is inevitable that wholesale deaths will continue. Russia’s initial invasion has faltered and stopped, and its military is regrouping around the tactics of siege, bombardment, and starvation. 

In the week ahead, we may see further atrocities such as chemical attacks.

It is Putin’s calculation that the West collectively lacks the resolve to challenge his dominance of the energy markets, and in this he has been proven right to date.

Environment Minister Eamon Ryan is correct to state that the best way to assist Ukraine is to stop spending vast sums on Russian gas and oil. If we do not up the ante, we will, as someone said in the context of the Covid pandemic, be letting the bodies pile high.

And no amount of generosity and céad míle fáilte for refugees is going to change that.