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Echoing Aaron Maté: Why didn't Putin pre-war threaten to stop oil+gas supplies or hike prices?

Posted by Jim_Carlucci <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Jim_Carlucci' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on January 26, 2023, 12:39 pm

(Echoing Aaron Maté: Why didn't Putin pre-war threaten to stop oil+gas supplies or hike prices?)

Quote(Aaron Maté, August 2022, "Rising" interview below):

"I can't accept the argument that just because Russia
was provoked means it was justified. And I can't accept the argument from Russia that they had no other option other than to invade Ukraine. Why didn't Putin for example do what he's doing now and reduce energy supplies to the rest of Europe...?"
- From "Rising" - interview (at 6'10") with Aaron Maté, August 2022" - watch below.

So my own question/comment is virtually identical to Aaron Maté's - why didn't Putin make the following pledge/threat or similar pre-war? >>>

"If the implementation of the Minsk Accords does not begin before February 2022 Russia will respond by doubling the price of oil and gas and limiting supplies to Germany and other EU nations while increasing exports to existing and new partners elsewhere etc."

Also: if Putin and Lavrov had loudly and repeatedly threatened/pledged to do this on the world stage in late 2021 or in Jan 2022 it would - crucially - have finally forced the world's media to break their deafening Minsk Accord silence and their audiences' Minsk Accord ignorance.

So here is Aaron Maté (at 6'10") (heretically?) stating more or less the same thing last year - and insisting that Putin did not exhaust all alternatives to war:

Quote repeat(Aaron Maté):

"I can't accept the argument that just because Russia was provoked means it was justified. And I can't accept the argument from Russia that they had no other option other than to invade Ukraine. Why didn't Putin for example do what he's doing now and reduce energy supplies to the rest of Europe...?"

Re: Echoing Aaron Maté: Why didn't Putin pre-war threaten to stop oil+gas supplies or hike prices?

Posted by Dovetail Joint <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Dovetail+Joint' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on January 26, 2023, 1:07 pm, in reply to "Echoing Aaron Maté: Why didn't Putin pre-war threaten to stop oil+gas supplies or hike prices?"

Chomsky has also stated that even if Russia was provoked by Ukraine/West, that doesn't justify his invasion and it's still an international crime that should be condemned by the left too.

Mate is arguing something similar, that Putin could have reduced energy supplies to the rest of Europe to put pressure on them to impliment the Minsk Accords...

Only Putin didn't reduce energy supplies to Europe first, Europe sanctioned Russian energy supplies and stopped paying for the oil! That's something very different, isn't it? Not only that Europe confiscated billions of Russian assets and billions investments and currencies in western financial instituions. Then the US destroys Nord Steam 2 pipeline.

Putin didn't want to stop oil and gas supplies to Europe for a number of sound reasons. First he didn't want to escalate the conflict in Ukraine to encompass all of Europe. He didn't want to employ the sanctions weapon first, precisely because it's so damaging.

If thousands of dead ethnic Russians in Donbass, some put the number as high as 12,000 killed over the last eight years, wasn't enough to force the Europeans to take action and demand that Ukraine stop the daily bombardments of civilian targets, then it's highly unlikely that imposing a cap on oil and gas exports to Europe would have achieved anything more substantial.

I don't think Russia had a realistic alternative to intervening in Ukraine. They knew NATO wasn't backing the regime and the military for nothing. The idea was to attack Donbass and Crimea when the time was right, when they were ready. Given Russia's history, waitng for the West to attack them, wasn't an option.

Re: Echoing Aaron Maté: Why didn't Putin pre-war threaten to stop oil+gas supplies or hike prices?

Posted by Dovetail Joint <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Dovetail+Joint' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on January 26, 2023, 1:18 pm, in reply to "Re: Echoing Aaron Maté: Why didn't Putin pre-war threaten to stop oil+gas supplies or hike prices?"

I ghink Mate and Choksky's 'arguments' are faicle.

Didn't the Russians spend years attempting to get the West to wake up to what was happening in Ukraine and understand the dangers and potentially catastrophic consequences of their actions? That it would lead to war?

The Russians also delivered two draft treaties to the West relating to arms control, troop reductions in border areas, removing offensive missiles and a proposed structure for ensuring the broad and mutual, reciprocal, security safeguards for all countries in the region and in wider Europe.

As far as I recall all of this was not just ignored by the West but treated with something close to contempt. The West believed that Russia was so weak economically and militarily that they just had to suck up whatever the West presented them with, because they had no choice.

Re: Echoing Aaron Maté: Why no threat to gas/oil supplies? Lots of reasons,

Posted by John Monro <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=John+Monro' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on January 26, 2023, 11:27 pm, in reply to "Re: Echoing Aaron Maté: Why didn't Putin pre-war threaten to stop oil+gas supplies or hike prices?"

I'm pretty sure that folk like Ritter have said that Russia had good intelligence to indicate that the mass of Ukrainian troops, perhaps amounting to 90,000, were preparing to invade the Donbas and fight the Donbas militia and the Russian troops aiding them in a very short time frame - so there was likely a military urgency here that long-term threats to gas supplies wouldn't help. And wasn't Russia right, Europe cut off its gas supplies on its very own so in what way would fighting a gas war or trying to blackmail Europe with gas supplies work? In addition, and more importantly, the US actually wanted Russia to cut off the gas supplies, and when they didn't they made sure Europe did, even to the point of blowing up the gas pipe line,

No, I wouldn't exactly call this argument facile, but it was far too late in the game to have been a Russian option. .

If the US and neocons' in Europe idea was to deliberately precipitate a physical military attack in Ukraine, they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. To blame Russia for doing something that the US was so desperately working towards in any case could be seen as highly hypocritical, or at the best as seriously misguided.

Then again, the Russians and Putin are a bit less stupid and likely more cynical than the West imagines, if gas supplies to Europe provided billions of dollars every week to Russia why stop that before they needed to? Wasn't it some Russian said that a capitalist will sell you the rope you use to hang him?

Finally, Russia had warned the US and NATO of the consequences of expanding NATO to its borders for around twenty five years, Russia would have long since realised the the West was immune to reason, and the the inbuilt hatred of its motherland, the West's centuries old Russophobia, was going to triumph over every other consideration, perhaps upto full conventional warfare, and beyond. Ben Wallace is proof of that, in his remark "The Scots Guards kicked the backside of Tsar Nicholas the First in 1853. We can always do it again" - though the obvious problem that presents itself to me is that the UK doesn't now have enough horses, and didn't the Turks have some part in that dearth of suitable animals?

A 100,000 strong Ukie army with heavy equipment was threatening the Donbass. That's an imminent

Posted by sashimi <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=sashimi' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on January 26, 2023, 1:09 pm, in reply to "Echoing Aaron Maté: Why didn't Putin pre-war threaten to stop oil+gas supplies or hike prices?"

threat and Russia could only act within international law if a referendum was taken with Donetsk and Lugansk voting to become part of Russia.

Scott Ritter on Article 51:
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/29/russia-ukraine-the-law-of-war-crime-of-aggression/
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/04/01/russia-ukraine-and-the-law-of-war-war-and-war-crimes/

Russia holds true to its obligations under international law - it contracted to supply gas, so does so, unlike the US rules based order.

That would only make sense if ..

Posted by Tomski <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=TomskiD' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on January 26, 2023, 2:00 pm, in reply to "Echoing Aaron Maté: Why didn't Putin pre-war threaten to stop oil+gas supplies or hike prices?"

.. RF was prescient about Ukie military dramatically increasing the bombardment of Donetsk civilians just prior to 24th Feb '22. According to RF (and I believe in that claim) Ukie military were poised to invade Donbass at this juncture. Until then, militarily, it was a 'relative' status quo.

Reducing the energy supplies to Europe would have meant an economic war which RF economy was not prepared for, although they were in the process of preparation.

Coincidentally, this Rising interview with Maté was just prior to NS2 pipeline being mysteriously sabotaged. Not sure if relevant, I am just trying to look at the timeline.

He was wrong in this instance imo. It would be interesting to see if he still believes this.

Re: That would only make sense if ..

Posted by Dovetail Joint <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Dovetail+Joint' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on January 26, 2023, 2:43 pm, in reply to "That would only make sense if .."

I think there's an even stronger argument about the true character of the conflict in Ukraine. If Ukraine and NATO were really wedded to the idea of peace, then wouldn't they have pushed hard for a negotiated settlement sooner, rather than later? When both Crimea and Donbass are predominantly ethnic Russian and Crimea is bristling with naval bases; the idea that the regime in Kiev is ever going to be welcomed with bread and salt there, is absurd, so why not let them go? Obviously it's because the West doesn't want peace, but war, until they get regime change in Russia.

Re: That would only make sense if ..

Posted by Tomski <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=TomskiD' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on January 26, 2023, 3:32 pm, in reply to "Re: That would only make sense if .."

Well, we know that Minsk II was a sham since it was 'implemented' in 2015, with Ukie military trained to NATO standards and weapons for 8 years, so there was no question about Ukr/NATO ever wanting peace.

Crimea was snatched away from the US, in 2014, after RF realised US had plans to convert Sebastopol into US naval asset (remember US construction plans to convert/refurbish the school there?). In essence it would have meant US control of the Black Sea, which would have made RF somewhat uncomfortable : ).

Bread and salt

Posted by Ian M <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Ian+M' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on January 26, 2023, 6:28 pm, in reply to "Re: That would only make sense if .."

Thanks for the introduction to this Russian idiom. For anyone wondering:

https://www.rbth.com/russian-kitchen/328522-why-russians-greet-bread-salt

Tell your story; Ask a question; Interpret generously
http://storybythethroat.wordpress.com/tell-ask-listen/

Re: Echoing Aaron Maté: Why didn't Putin pre-war threaten to stop oil+gas supplies or hike prices?

Posted by Ken Waldron <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Ken+Waldron' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on January 26, 2023, 3:26 pm, in reply to "Echoing Aaron Maté: Why didn't Putin pre-war threaten to stop oil+gas supplies or hike prices?"

"I can't accept the argument that just because Russia was provoked means it was justified. And I can't accept the argument from Russia that they had no other option other than to invade Ukraine. Why didn't Putin for example do what he's doing now and reduce energy supplies to the rest of Europe...?"

For the Russians to leverage their gas and oil supplies against Europe at that stage would have made no difference because, despite the fact that it was essentially acting as a NATO catspaw, the Europeans would merely claim Ukraine was an Independent state free to make its own decisions.
The Russians likewise still believed that Ukraine had agency and to some extent that was still true: the negotiations for peace in April were therefore between Ukraine and Russia and not the west.

But of course there was to be "...no show without Punch" and thus on 9 April Johnson made his flying visit to Kyiv to insist Ukraine break off negotiations. According to the Ukrainska Pravda Johnston told Zelensky that the West seriously fancied its chances against Russia:

"Johnson’s position was that the collective West ...now felt Putin was not really as powerful as they had previously imagined, and that here was a chance to ‘press him’"

Offering all kinds of assistance if they continued fighting and no help at all if they reached a peace agreement with Russia, Boris convinced Zelensky and a few days later he announced that the negotiations which had up to this point apparently reached a stage of a tentative agreement were instead at a "dead end".

At that point Zelensky effectively surrendered any remaining Ukrainian agency entirely to the west. It was therefore only at that point would a Russian oil and gas embargo to pressure NATO and Europe have made any sense, but of course that would be entirely unnecessary as Europe's politicians decided to do it for them in a misguided attempt to destroy the Russian economy.

Re: Echoing Aaron Maté: Why didn't Putin pre-war threaten to stop oil+gas supplies or hike prices?

Posted by Dovetail Joint <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Dovetail+Joint' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on January 26, 2023, 4:17 pm, in reply to "Re: Echoing Aaron Maté: Why didn't Putin pre-war threaten to stop oil+gas supplies or hike prices?"

According to Chomsky, the contemporary record shows that Minsk 2 wasn't a sham and the Germans and French were sincere about negotiating with Russia; remember the British and US were purposely kept away from Minsk, and they wanted to 'freeze' the conflict and avoid escalation into a full-blown civil war in Ukraine.

A war inside Ukraine would clearer drag Russia in, because their are millions of Russians in Ukraine and it has colossal strategic importance for Russia, not least Crimea.

It's only now that the Germans offer the idea that they were only involved in Minsk 2 as a clever way to string the Russians along whilst they poured money and weapons into Ukraine and prepared for war. But is this new rationale, in fact true? Or is it an exercise in damage limitation?

The Germans politiciasn would prefer, in relation to public opinion in Germany, to appear like 'smart liars', than 'cowed vassals' under the yoke of London and Washington. The idea that if Washington wants a war in Europe, it gets a war in Europe, regardless of what Germany or France might want; is really explosive territory to get into, with potential massive consequensces.

The Americans destroyed Nord Stream 2, effectively crippling the Germany economy, and there's nothing the Germans can do about it, because Germany isn't sovereign and isn't in charge of its own destiny. It's a vassal state.

The awkward question then arises, is Washington ready to see Germany destroyed, and other European countries, surely a small price to pay for defeating Russia? Of course no European leader dares go anywhere near such a frightening scenario.

One can imagine Washington calculating that they can keep a nuclear war confined to Europe and the Russians won't dare hit the continental United States. That's some gamble!

Re: Echoing Aaron Maté: Why didn't Putin pre-war threaten to stop oil+gas supplies or hike prices?

Posted by Ken Waldron <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Ken+Waldron' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on January 26, 2023, 5:13 pm, in reply to "Re: Echoing Aaron Maté: Why didn't Putin pre-war threaten to stop oil+gas supplies or hike prices?"

"According to Chomsky, the contemporary record shows that Minsk 2 wasn't a sham and the Germans and French were sincere about negotiating with Russia..."

Well, as Newland infamously said of their input on Ukraine: "...Fuwk the EU..." Those are just the monkeys. As Chomsky knows, policy came from the Organ-grinder:

"...The U.S. dismissed them* in favor of integrating Ukraine into the NATO (that is, U.S.) military command, also refusing to take any Russian security concerns into consideration..."

*Minsk agreements

Re: Echoing Aaron Maté: Why didn't Putin pre-war threaten to stop oil+gas supplies or hike prices?

Posted by Tomski <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=TomskiD' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on January 26, 2023, 6:24 pm, in reply to "Re: Echoing Aaron Maté: Why didn't Putin pre-war threaten to stop oil+gas supplies or hike prices?"

The other exhibit being the fact that NATO was arming and training Ukie army since signing the Minsk 2 agreement in 2015. The organ grinder was in charge and from that perspective alone, Minsk 2 implementation was clearly a sham. Chomsky mainly reads NYT and WaPo and he was unlikely to get that info from these sources imo.

Mates comment presupposes an agreement capable, non hubristic, non supremacist western elite

Posted by Focus <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=focus' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on January 27, 2023, 2:41 am, in reply to "Echoing Aaron Maté: Why didn't Putin pre-war threaten to stop oil+gas supplies or hike prices?"

... one capable of seeking balance, via negative feedback, as a guide to steering policy and more colloquially, one that doesn't reinforce stupidity and work itself up into some kind of preemptive narcissistic wound.

I think he hasn't quite understood the historical and systemic trajectory. Or is shilling fallback line of defence that lay into well worn narratives.

Cheers
Focus

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