Valdai Club

The energy systems have tremendous inertia, and it would be a strategic blunder to think that a political directive can provide the EU with alternatives to the Russian energy by a wave of the magic wand. The EU wants to be in control of when it stops importing Russian oil and gas, but this may not be possible, writes Vitaly Yermakov, Expert, Centre for Comprehensive European and International Studies, HSE University.

If Europe and Canada are unable to find a face-saving compromise to deal with the sanctions mess over gas turbines now, by November Germany’s choice might become even more embarrassing: to let Nord Stream 2 flow or risk a full-blown gas crisis and super-high prices in the midst of winter, writes Valdai Club expert Vitaly Yermakov.

Energy trade has been the backbone of the overall economic relationship between Russia and the West. This is especially true of Europe, which has been the main export market for Russian energy. But now it appears that this era is ending abruptly.

On February 4th 2022 China's President Xi Jinping and Russia's President Vladimir Putin met in Beijing before the opening ceremony of the Winter Olimpics that China hosted. The summit resulted in a joint statement on the situation in global international affairs in which China and Russia expressed their alignment and joint support on the main issues of the current geo-political agenda

Amid hostilities in Ukraine and the avalanche of the European economic sanctions against Russia, Russian gas has been flowing to Europe, including the transit via Ukraine, without interruption. For now, it looks like Russia-Europe gas trade has been in the eye of the storm (an area of calm weather at the centre of a strong cyclone).


Gas trade between Russia and Europe has had its ups and downs for over half a century but has brought tremendous benefits to both sides. Europe’s energy policy ambition of a fast shift to a carbon-neutral economy for which natural gas is undesirable and merely a near-term, stop-gap solution is a threat to Russia-Europe gas trade. In these circumstances, Russia is likely to intensify its efforts to diversify away from its dependence on the European gas market both in terms of methods of gas delivery and target markets, writes Vitaly Yermakov, expert with the Centre for Comprehensive European and International Studies, National Research University Higher School of Economics.

European politicians and lobbyists, in their pursuit to invent new tools to achieve carbon neutrality “during the lifetime of this generation”, increasingly resemble Victor Frankenstein, who created the Monster from dead matter, but lost control over it.

The peculiarity of the current situation is that the world immediately faced three crises that coincided in time