Sanctions work and how!

The other day, during a speech to Hungarian youth in Băile Tușnad in Romania, Viktor Orbán expressed his political creed: the war in Ukraine broke out because Russia did not receive security guarantees from the West, Western sanctions are ineffective, Ukraine will not win the war, so Americans and Russians should talk about peace, because Europe no longer means anything in world politics. NATO is more powerful than Russia, so talks about Russia's plans to attack the Alliance and the Union are nothing but Ukrainian propaganda.

The benefit for us lies in the fact that Orbán has said everything Russia is disturbed with. It still dreams of an "equal treaty" with the Americans, but it is for bravery and maintaining discipline among its vassals and "Russlandversteher" (those supporting Russia). Because Russia will lose completely. Thanks to the Western support, Ukrainian army has launched a counterattack in the south and may liberate Kherson in the near future. Sanctions are working and are getting tougher and tougher, as the EU has just agreed to the seventh package.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz specifically announced that there is no more dependence on Russian oil and gas. Germans are ready for a hard winter, and their economy is essentially going into a war reality, if not a single cubic meter of gas comes from Russia. The policy of hoping that "close economic ties and mutual dependence will bring stability and security" also ended in defeat. It was  not fulfilled due to the Kremlin's imperialist and colonial mindset.

At the beginning of the sixth month of the war in Ukraine, such statements should be obvious, but they are not. Some respectable people still write that sanctions bring more harm than good, and their price for Europe is higher than for Russia. They are "wholeheartedly" on the Ukrainian side, which means more weapons for Ukraine, but "the economy is governed by other rules."

Economy is out of control now, because politics has a fundamental influence on it. This is a lesson that must be understood with closed eyes in Poland, and a few examples  would come in handy. The Yamal gas pipeline was supposed to be a purely commercial project, but its "commerciality" ended with the issue of optical fiber, which Gazprom wanted to have an exclusive right for. As well as the issue of the "switch" (gas pipeline connecting Yamal with the Ukrainian network of gas pipelines) in Ukraine.

Germans, especially Chancellor Scholz's SDP, maintained until the end that Nord Stream-2 is a "purely commercial" investment, although last summer Russians hit the EU with a cut in gas supplies so that Europe "does not interfere" when Russia goes to Ukraine with its entire army. It is hard to imagine that there were those who jumped out of their skin to justify the "advantages" that Poland would have had if it had led its pipe to this gas pipeline, instead of diversifying sources of supply and building a gas terminal in Świnoujście.

Russian economy is bending under the weight of sanctions. Factories with production depending on Western and Asian components are shutting down. Oil prices for India and China have fallen because it is becoming more and more difficult to sell oil in other markets. The same will happen with gas, because blackmail of stopping its supply no longer works.

Citing the piece of Russian propaganda about insufficient Western security guarantees for Russia as the reason for the invasion of Ukraine, Orban showed how short his leash is when it comes to the Kremlin's orders. At the same time, he reminded that safe, stable and profitable economic development is impossible in a world ruled by autocrats obsessed with the past greatness of their countries.