EU Has Started Drafting New Russia Sanctions

 

Politico: EU begins drafting new Russia sanctions  

Consultations will start within days, according to EU diplomats. 

The European Commission will start consultations with EU countries' representatives on an upcoming sanctions package within days, four EU diplomats told POLITICO. 

Brussels has already implemented several sanctions packages against Russia over its war with Ukraine. The European Commission is currently preparing new measures and will discuss proposals with EU ambassadors as soon as Friday, the diplomats said. 

Diplomats expect a discussion on a plan to cap the price of Russian oil, which is currently being discussed in the G7. The U.S. is putting pressure on the EU to make progress on an oil price cap before the EU's ban against Russian oil imports comes into force in December.  

Read more .... 

WNU Editor: Are sanctions really working? Some are saying no .... Are the West’s sanctions against Russia actually working? (The Conversation). More here .... Are the West's sanctions on Russia really working? Even US officials are acknowledging that the result they expected is not happening .... Russian sanctions slow to bite as US officials admit frustrations over pace of pain in Moscow (CNN). 

And then there is Russian Foreign Minister saying openly what no one else is .... Sanctions Failed To Shatter Russian Economy But Causing Damage To European Nations: Lavrov (Republic World). 

As to what is my take. 

Sanctions have definitely hurt the Russian economy. But predictions by everyone from President Biden in March who said the Russian currency would collapse to EU leaders voicing their confidence at the start of the war that the Russian economy would crater has definitely not happened. 

And the reason why is simple. 

The West is learning the hard lesson that commodities do make a difference. 

At the start of sanctions the West believed that things like financial derivatives, asset backed securities, monetary fiscal structures, and other paper and electronic financial tools that are used in conducting business would be enough to isolate and devastate the Russian economy. 

To say that they have been proven completely wrong is an understatement. 

Russia is the world's resource super-power, and what Russia has is what the world needs. Including the West. That underneath every financial system in the world there are commodities that drive it, and absent having these commodities and real assets you just have paper whose only real value will be to use it to start a fire or as toilet paper. 

That is why I believe that the absence of this understanding among our leaders on how economic systems really work has created the slow train of an economic disaster that we are now seeing in the West. That inflation, economic contraction, rocketing government and personal debts, to be followed in 2023 by business closures, a housing crisis and increasing unemployment is the result of these disastrous policies. 

So who is to blame for this mess? 

Clearly our leaders, guided by the intelligence community alongside government treasury and economic institutions, have miscalculated. They underestimated the depth of the Russian economy, and overestimated the economic power of the West to influence events. 

A prediction. 

When this is all over, and it will be over, historians will look upon these times as one of the biggest Western intelligence and political disasters of all times. That as bad as Iraq having WMD was used in justifying the Iraq war in 2023, this failure will be viewed on a magnitude many times greater.