Tag: EU

Play Stupid Energy Games

Win the prize of a cold, dark winter and an angry citizenry:

Russia is deliberately sabotaging the Nord Stream 1 natural gas pipeline to spite the EU, European officials have claimed, questioning Moscow’s explanation for an indefinite delay in restoring service.

State-owned energy giant Gazprom informed its European customers on Saturday that it could not safely resume operations until it had fixed “oil leaks” discovered in a major turbine during a maintenance operation.

Nord Stream was set to come back online just after midnight Saturday morning after three days of maintenance. The leaks, reportedly affecting “cables connected to speed meters of a rotor,” were discovered during a technical inspection with the turbine’s German manufacturer Siemens. Moscow had earlier warned that the pipeline’s operation was threatened by sanctions, which had created a shortage of spare parts.

However, Siemens argued the company had alternate turbines at the compressor station where the leak had been discovered and could use one of those in case of a real emergency. “Such leaks do not normally affect the operation of a turbine and can be sealed on site,” they claimed.

European Commission spokesman Charles Michel condemned what he called Russia’s “use of gas as a weapon,” declaring it would not “change the resolve of the EU” as the bloc works toward “energy independence.”

Commission press service chief Eric Mamer slammed the “fallacious pretenses” he claimed Gazprom had used to shut down the pipeline, holding it up as proof of both their “cynicism” and their “unreliability as a supplier” and suggesting Moscow “prefer[red] to flare gas instead of honoring contracts.”

German parliamentary foreign affairs committee chair Michael Roth denounced the shutdown as “part of Russia’s psychological war against us” and accused President Vladimir Putin of “violat[ing] contracts without scruples….even at the expense of his own economic interests.”

Let’s get this straight. Europe has a perfectly operational natural gas pipeline, Nord Stream 2, that it refuses to use. Russia has, quite reasonably, decided that it’s not interested in continuing to provide natural gas to the same countries that are a) sanctioning its people and b) arming and funding the Ukrainian war against Russia on the terms of those enemies.

Can you even imagine how many contracts have been violated by the European sanctions against Russia? This anti-Russian rhetoric is as ineffective as it is retarded. Frankly, I’m astonished that the Russians didn’t shut down the pipeline months ago.

Then again, it is rather amusing to see the Russians slowly dialing up the pain while simultaneously pretending that there is nothing they can do about it. As an award-winning cruelty artist, I have to say that I tend to approve of the sadistic diplomacy they have applied to this situation.

Germany’s initial Energy Saving Ordinance, in effect for the next six months:

  • Retail stores may no longer keep their doors open throughout the day to reduce electricity consumption for air conditioning when it is hot outside — and for heating on cold winter days.
  • Public buildings and monuments have to go dark at 10 p.m.
  • Illuminated advertising must be switched off after 10p.m., with only a few exceptions. If advertisements serve traffic safety, they remain switched on, for example, at railroad underpasses. Street lamps also remain on, and store windows may continue to be illuminated.
  • Monuments and other buildings may no longer be illuminated at night. At least not for purely aesthetic reasons. However, emergency lighting will not be switched off, and illumination is permitted for cultural events and public festivals.
  • In public buildings, halls and corridors will generally no longer be heated, and the temperature in offices will be limited to a maximum of 19 degrees. In places where heavy physical work is performed, temperatures will be even lower in the future. However, the restrictions do not apply to social facilities such as hospitals, daycare centers, and schools, where higher air temperatures are essential for the “health of the people who spend time there,” according to the Economy Ministry.
  • Cutting back on warm water. Likewise, in public buildings, instantaneous water heaters or hot water tanks should be switched off if they are mainly used for washing hands. Exceptions are made for medical facilities, schools, and daycare centers. Some cities go even further. There, the showers in swimming pools and sports halls will remain unheated.
  • Private pools may no longer be heated with gas and electricity, except for rehab centers, recreational facilities, and hotels. The new regulations will initially apply until the end of February.

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Destroying Democracy to Save It

It didn’t take the Green Party in Germany long to abandon democracy and go full totalitarian:

Even if Germans take to the streets over energy prices, Berlin must support Ukraine by maintaining sanctions on Russia, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told a conference in Prague on Wednesday.

While much of the German cabinet was at a working retreat in Castle Meseberg outside Berlin, Baerbock was in Prague for a conference dubbed ‘Democracy’s Clear and Present Danger: How Do We Respond?’ organized by the NGO Forum 2000.

“If I give the promise to people in Ukraine – ‘We stand with you, as long as you need us’ – then I want to deliver. No matter what my German voters think, but I want to deliver to the people of Ukraine,” Baerbock said at one point.

“I have to be clear that this holds on as long as Ukraine needs me,” she said, referring to the EU embargo against Russia.

“We are facing now wintertime, when we will be challenged as democratic politicians. People will go in the street and say ‘We cannot pay our energy prices’. And I will say ‘Yes I know, so we help you with social measures.’ But I don’t want to say ‘Ok then we stop the sanctions against Russia.’ We will stand with Ukraine, and this means the sanctions will stay also in wintertime, even if it gets really tough for politicians.”

These globalists are straight-up satanists, which you can recognize by their inevitable inversions. This woman is actually coming out and saying that no matter what the German voters think, the only way to protect democracy is to ignore them.

They had to destroy democracy to save it.

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Post-EU Europe

It’s on the way. Beginning with Brexit, the European Union is proceeding along the path of previous European political and monetary unions toward extinction.

Germany’s Chancellor Scholz of the Social Democratic Party proposes an end to EU vetoes, starting in areas of foreign policy and taxation.

This is an open acknowledgement that the globalist vision of the European Union has comprehensively failed. As I mentioned on last night’s Darkstream, the European leaders are going to have to choose between standing by their professed principles and taking off the veil and revealing themselves to be naked authoritarians.

Naturally, I anticipate they will choose the latter, but the problem is that their authority is mostly perceived and it rests entirely upon the very principles that they will be abandoning. Their problem is further complicated by the fact that a) they don’t possess very much in the way of force and b) they are already at war with a superior enemy who could easily arm and supply the nationalist forces that are rising against them.

There is little need for politicians in a post-political world. And an end to the EU vetoes is an absolute guarantee of the end of the European Union in its current form.

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The Death of Davos Man

The postmodernist econo-cultural vision of Europe has failed abysmally, as the ambitions of its architects were always based on false foundations and vastly exceeded their capabilities. More than four-fifths of the world has rejected their evil vision; the active resistance to it has barely even begun to take form. But it is already clear that there will be no Great Reset, and the global imperialists who believed they were destined to rule the world and own everything in it will be lucky to survive the series of regime changes over the next decade that are among the probable consequences of the Euro-Russian War.

The leadership in Moscow is making it very clear, to internal and international audiences, the new deal consists in slow cooking the Kiev racket inside a massive cauldron while polishing its status of financial black hole for the collective West. Until we reach boiling point – which will be a revolution or a putsch.

In parallel, The Lords of (Proxy) War will continue with their own strategy, which is to pillage an enfeebled, fearful, Europe, then dressing it up as a perfumed colony to be ruthlessly exploited ad nauseam by the imperial oligarchy.

Europe is now a runaway TGV – minus the requisite Hollywood production values. Assuming it does not veer off track – a dicey proposition – it may eventually arrive at a railway station called Agenda 2030, The Great Narrative, or some other NATO/Davos denomination du jour.

As it stands, what’s remarkable is how the “marginal” Russian economy hardly broke a sweat to “end the abundance” of the wealthiest region on the planet.

Moscow does not even entertain the notion of negotiating with Brussels because there’s nothing to negotiate – considering puny Eurocrats will only be hurled away from their zombified state when the dire socio-economic consequences of “the end of abundance” will finally translate into peasants with pitchforks roaming the continent.

It may be eons away, but inevitably the average Italian, German or Frenchman will connect the dots and realize it is their own “leaders” – national nullities and mostly unelected Eurocrats – who are paving their road to poverty.

You will be poor. And you will like it. Because we are all supporting freedom for Ukrainian neo-nazis. That brings the concept of “multicultural Europe” to a whole new level.

It’s clear that the Russians have already concluded that they will have to separate the eastern half of Ukraine from the NATO-WEF regime in order to keep the Russian-speakers living there safe from the terrorist attacks of the desperate, and defeated, government in Kiev. The question is whether they will do so quickly, or if they will continue to proceed with the highly effective attrition warfare that is depleting US military resources while simultaneously putting economic pressure on the European governments.

My bet is on the latter. I suspect the Russians are less interested in regime change in Kiev than they are in Berlin, Paris, Rome, Warsaw, and Bern. They know perfectly well that the people of Europe are no more enthusiastic about “standing with Ukraine” than they are about “welcoming refugees”; the media narratives were always fake and wholly manufactured.

  • The EU will encounter “major challenges” due to the sanctions it imposed on Russia over the conflict in Ukraine, the bloc’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, has said.
  • Former Czech President Vaclav Klaus has rejected the notion that the Ukrainian conflict has been the sole reason for the economic problems now experienced around the globe. “This is self-inflicted, this is self-inflicted by the West. The Russian invasion just added to that.”
  • Budapest refuses to negotiate any further EU restrictions targeting Russian energy because there is no current alternative to supplies from Moscow, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Saturday.
  • With food prices up 15 percent, COVID-19 job losses and surging energy costs, more and more people are seeking support from different social services. Germany’s 962 food banks are supporting more than two million customers.
  • Beyond firewood and natural gas, energy prices in Croatia have skyrocketed in the past few months. It’s not just consumers feeling the squeeze – across the country, it essentially forces many small fuel stations out of business. The entire nation is preparing for the incoming winter with unease.
  • A group of Left-SPD lawmakers have had enough of the unprecedented Ukraine arms shipments following on the heels of Berlin boosting its military budget by €100 billion. They’ve sent a letter to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz with the title, “The weapons must be silent!” Instead of pumping weapons into a hot conflict with a nuclear-armed superpower, the group within Scholz’s own party are demanding the pursuit of a diplomatic negotiations, pushing the Ukrainians to the peace talks table.

Davos Man is dead. And winter is coming.

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Unrest in Europe

If even the wealthy and highly-prepared Swiss are anticipating shortage-related social unrest despite their world-class self-sufficiency, the social order across Europe and in the UK is unlikely to remain intact this winter.

Swiss people may revolt and resort to looting if the Alpine nation is hit by a severe energy crunch this winter, the police chief of one of its cantons told local media on Saturday.

Fredy Fassler, the head of the Security and Justice Department in the canton of St. Gallen, told German-language daily Blick that a blackout would have “far-reaching consequences.”

“Imagine, you can no longer withdraw money at the ATM, you can no longer pay with the card in the store or refuel your tank at the gas station. Heating stops working. It’s cold. Streets go dark. It is conceivable that the population would rebel or that there would be looting,” he said, adding that the country’s authorities should take measures to prepare for such extreme scenarios…

Fassler’s comments come after Swiss authorities said last week that they may place restrictions on energy consumption this coming winter, signaling that “power shortages [are] among the most serious risks” for the landlocked country.

What the police chief doesn’t mention is that the main reason the Swiss would likely be rebelling against their government is that the country produces what should be sufficient electricity for its own winter needs, but it has promised to provide a fair amount of that electricity to the rest of Europe. And the Swiss people are very unlikely to accept the idea that they have to freeze in darkness so that their electricity can be sent to France or Germany due to the outdated ideals of a few globalist Europhiles.

Still, the fact that the Swiss authorities are already talking openly about the situation and at least beginning to try to address the problem is a positive sign. The silence of the EU countries on the subject does not bode quite so well. Of course, the solution for the Europeans is perfectly straightforward: stop participating in the neocon’s proxy war on Russia, end the idiotic sanctions regime, return everything that was seized, and apologize profusely to the Russian government.

Like it or not, no one can deny that it’s a better alternative than famine, freezing, and facing a popular revolt. If they don’t choose wisely, the over/under on EU regime change before this time next year is probably around five and could be considerably higher. And Italy and Hungary will not be the only nations to exit the EU.

Nationalism is inevitable. Nationalism is inevitable because globalist imperialism is constructed on false foundations that we now know to be both evil and impossible.

UPDATE: Notice that the Swiss are on the verge of panic on the basis of an expected 10-percent shortfall. I anticipate the shortfalls in other European nations will be at least 3x that.

The energy shortage is “imminent”, Roger Nordmann from the left-wing Social Democratic party told the SonntagsBlick. “The war in Ukraine is causing acute gas shortages. Half of the nuclear power plants in France are at a standstill. And the drought is putting a strain on hydropower. This combination of drastic factors means that Switzerland could be short of around 15% gas and up to 10% electricity in the coming winter,” he said.

So end your war on Russia, guys. You took sides and you lost. It’s over. This really isn’t that hard.

UPDATE: Now the NHS in the UK is also starting to foresee trouble. Perhaps if the British authorities would stop welcoming “refugees” and start repatriating them to their homelands, they’d possess sufficient resources to prevent a humanitarian crisis among their own people.

The UK could face a “humanitarian crisis” involving ill health, excess deaths and rising inequality if the government does not take urgent action on rising energy bills, the National Health Service (NHS) Confederation warned on Friday. The organization wrote to the chancellor of the exchequer, claiming that failing to act would add more pressure on health services that were already strained.

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Ammo Diet

You won’t lose weight, but you will lose territory:

Ukraine’s European backers may be about to put the country on an “ammunition diet”, an American military analyst has claimed in an interview with Germany’s Der Spiegel. Michael Kofman said these nations may already have reached their limit in terms of weapons supplies to Kiev.

In an article published on Tuesday, Kofman was quoted as saying it is not in the Ukrainian military’s best interests to bide its time, as the weather will soon begin to worsen, making any counteroffensive more difficult to pull off. On top of that, according to the US expert, Russian troops could use a hiatus to regroup and “solve some of their personnel problems.”

He noted that time would be on Kiev’s side if Western support was unlimited. However, that is likely not the case, and the Ukrainian leadership is well aware of this, Kofman suggested. He added that the “Ukrainians are apparently quite concerned about for how long they can expect further support, especially from the Europeans.”

The analyst went on to suggest that Kiev’s European backers may already have “given Ukraine most of the weapons they are ready to give.”

“The Ukrainians will likely go on a kind of ammunition diet,” Kofman predicted.

The analyst told journalists that, with this in mind, the leadership in Kiev may be concerned that Ukraine “could come under pressure to accept the stalemate” in the absence of any major success by the start of next year. Such a scenario “would be a defeat for Ukraine,” he noted.

Kofman concluded that Kiev’s ability to reclaim territories seized by Russia ultimately hinges on the extent of its Western support.

He also acknowledged “some small Russian successes in the southern part of Donbass, like in Peski,” adding, however, that the offensive is largely being carried out by the militaries of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), as well as by “Wagner mercenaries.”

When asked about the possibility of a Ukrainian counteroffensive to reclaim the southern city of Kherson, which is currently held by Russian forces, Kofman pointed out that while Kiev has a lot of personnel on paper, only a limited number of units are “really trained and equipped for that.” The American expert also argued that, simply because Ukrainian officials say they will launch the counteroffensive, it does not necessarily mean that it will actually materialize.

Translation: the neocons may be willing to fight to the last European, but even the European globalists are rapidly beginning to lose their enthusiasm for giving up their food, electricity, and fuel in return for absolutely nothing but more military defeat-by-proxy. It’s anecdotal, but I haven’t seen or heard a single person say anything positive about “helping Ukraine” in weeks now. The general consensus is that it’s over, so let’s all move on already.

Note that the Russians aren’t even using their own troops, for the most part. The whole special military operation has been a proxy war in which the Russian-supported Donbass militias have roundly defeated the NATO-supported Ukrainian military despite the latter being well-entrenched and lavishly funded. If Russia wants to go all the way to Dunkirk – they absolutely don’t, they don’t even want all of Ukraine – there is very little that NATO or the European nations or the USA could do to slow them down.

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The Partition of Ukraine

The Saker contemplates the partition of Ukraine that he predicted six years ago.

Interesting info today. First, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service has, through the statement of a Colonel General, made the following statement (translated by my friend Andrei Martyanov on his blog): (emphasis added)

Translation: MOSCOW, August 16 – RIA Novosti. Western curators have practically written off the Kyiv regime and are already planning the partition of Ukraine, Foreign Intelligence Service spokesman Colonel-General Volodymyr Matveev said at the Moscow Conference on International Security. “Obviously, the West is not concerned about the fate of the Kyiv regime. As can be seen from the information received by the SVR, Western curators have almost written it off and are in full swing developing plans for the division and occupation of at least part of the Ukrainian lands,” he said. However, according to the general, much more is at stake than Ukraine: for Washington and its allies, it is about the fate of the colonial system of world domination.

Just to clarify, the SVR rarely makes public statements and when they do, you can take them to the bank as the SVR is not in the business of “leaks” from “informed sources” and all the rest of the PR nonsense produced by the so-called western “intelligence” agencies (which have now been fully converted to highly politicized propaganda outlets).

The same day I see this article on the RT website: “Western countries waiting for ‘fall of Ukraine’ – Kiev” in which an interesting statement the Ukronazi Foreign Minister is mentioned:

Several countries in the West are waiting for Kiev to surrender and think their problems will immediately solve themselves, said Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba in an interview published on Tuesday. “I often get asked in interviews and while speaking to other foreign ministers: how long will you last? That’s instead of asking what else could be done to help us defeat Putin in the shortest time possible,” Kuleba said, noting that such questions suggest that everyone “is waiting for us to fall and for their problems to disappear on their own.”

Finally, a while ago, Dmitri Medvedev post this “future map of the Ukraine after the war” on his Telegram account. This maps shows a Ukraine partitioned between her neighbors and a tiny rump Ukraine left in the center.

This anticipated partition would be a very good thing, as it would mark to an end the war between Russia and NATO by the surrender of the latter. The problem is that it will almost certainly require the European “partners” to break with the neocons who presently dictate US foreign policy, and the neocons are more than willing to fight to the very last European – yes, European, not Ukrainian – rather than give up their revenge war against Russia.

So, as fearful as the European leaders rightly are – they are terrified of their native populations going all Sri Lanka on their useless, cowardly selves once the winter shortages kick in – I don’t believe they are fully cognizant of the consequences of the Russian victory due to the media gaslighting, so they are reluctant to throw off their globalist masters and give up the fancy pants and lollipops that come with their submission.

Which means that I don’t think the nations that matter – France, Germany, and the UK – will give up and accept the new geopolitical reality until the winter of 2023 extinguishes all hope of reprieve, unless the coming winter is even worse than we’re expecting and the citizenries explode in open revolt.

UPDATE: The historic fissures in the NATO Alliance are already beginning to widen as the failure of the globalists’ European vision is becoming undeniable.

Berlin has plans to subjugate Eastern Europe and has designs on the lands that it lost in the past, Adam Glapinski the head of the National Bank of Poland has claimed, adding that his country stands as a bulwark against those ambitions.

Glapinski offered the grim prediction about Warsaw’s current diplomatic confrontation with Berlin in an interview with Gazeta Polska, which was published on Wednesday. Since the reunification of Germany in 1990, Berlin’s strategic goal is to “regain in some form their former lands, which are now within Polish borders, and subordinate the entire belt of countries between Germany and Russia,” the Polish official said.

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Europe’s First White Flag

The Hungarians are the first crack in the neo-liberal dam:

The Russia-Ukraine conflict could end the West’s dominance and shift the balance of power in the world, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said. Russia launched a military campaign against the neighboring country in late February.

Orban argued that the decision to impose sanctions on Moscow and supply Kiev with heavy weapons de facto turned the EU and NATO member states into participants in the conflict, but ultimately yielded no results.

“Instead, today we are sitting inside a car with flat tires on all four wheels,” Orban said in a speech in the Romanian city of Baile Tusnad on Saturday.

“The world is not only not with us, but it is demonstratively not with us,” the PM added, arguing that, instead of thinking about gaining the upper hand on the battlefield in Ukraine, the West should now focus on achieving peace through negotiations.

Orban also warned that the conflict could easily put an end to Western supremacy and “create a multipolar world order.”

“We must try to persuade the West to develop a new strategy,” the PM said. He later added that the conflict “will end when the Americans and the Russians come to an agreement.”

Well, better late than never. But Viktor Orban is very unlikely to pull his fellow European leaders out of their vast morass of self-justifying moronics, as they clearly have absolutely no grasp of which side the current balance of power favors or that the US military is entirely incapable of bailing them out of the geopolitical trap in which they have needlessly caught themselves.

The most successful European countries of the future will be the first ones to break with the neo-liberal order and make a separate, independent, and sovereign peace with the BRICSIA nations. There is absolutely no point in trying to convince retards to be reasonable; if they were capable of being reasonable then they wouldn’t have engaged in their previous retardery in the first place.

If they can convince themselves that being a “humanitarian superpower” counterbalances a military superpower, and that redefining “neutrality” permits not only taking sides in a military conflict, but imposing economic sanctions on one side, and that fighting a war against both China and Russia at the same time is winnable, then they are ineducable and irrelevant.

While Britain left the EU, it did not break with the neo-liberal order. Orban would do well by his people to do both. The world is changing. And the world order will change.

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No Gas for Germany

Germany is going to have to wave the white flag if it wants to get through the winter. And winter is coming.

Germany’s natural gas reserves are not enough to see the country through next winter without purchasing additional Russian gas, the top official in charge of electricity and gas networks has told the media.

In an interview with Germany’s Bild am Sonntag, published on Sunday, Klaus Muller warned that while “gas reservoirs are nearly 65% full,” and “it’s better than in the previous weeks” it is still not sufficient to “go through the winter without Russian gas.”

Muller, who is president of Germany’s Federal Network Agency, added that much now depends on whether maintenance work on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline concludes as expected on Thursday.

When asked how long it would take before energy prices for consumers in Germany are further raised, in case of a complete stoppage of Russian gas deliveries, Muller said no decision has yet been made. However, he offered reassurances, noting that “there hasn’t been any significant price surge this week, even though the Nord Stream 1 was shut off.” The official suggested this may be a sign that “markets have already internalized the loss of Russian gas supplies and we’ve reached a gas-price-plateau.”

The energy regulator president insisted that Germans “shouldn’t succumb to panic,” assuring that “private households have the least reason of all to worry,” and will be provided with gas far longer than industry.

Keep in mind that this situation is without Russia taking any aggressive or punitive steps to intentionally reduce Europe’s energy needs or otherwise harm the European economies. I expect that situation will change following the next Russian ultimatum.

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Russia Won the Oil War

This was already obvious, but the latest additions to BRICSIA will make it undeniable.

Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt plan to join BRICS, and their potential membership bids could be discussed and answered at next year’s summit in South Africa, Purnima Anand, the president of the BRICS International Forum, told Russian media on Thursday.

“All these countries have shown their interest in joining and are preparing to apply for membership. I believe this is a good step, because expansion is always looked upon favorably; it will definitely bolster BRICS’ global influence,” she told Russian newspaper Izvestia.

The BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) account for over 40% of the global population and nearly a quarter of the world’s GDP.

Saudia Arabia is the literal headline, but the more intriguing potential addition here is Turkey. How does Turkey remain a member of both BRICSIATES and NATO when the economic blocs are at war with each other? The logical conclusion: it doesn’t, it leaves NATO.

Which is why we should watch for an “unexpected” announcement that the EU has suddenly approved Turkey’s application for membership after 23 years of sitting on it. I doubt that will be enough to convince the Turks to stay on board with the globalists after decades of being treated like third-class non-citizens, but you never know.

Turkey leaving NATO would be a serious hammer blow to NATO’s credibility and stability, as adding Finland and Sweden but losing Turkey would completely change the strategic situation in Europe. Instead of Russia being surrounded on three sides, it would be the US-occupied European nations that are pinned against the Atlantic Ocean.

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