[retromario]

I think it's only a matter of time until the US and Germany stop buying gas from Russia. It's going to cause a lot of pain, especially for us in Germany where nearly a third of gas is imported from Russia. But that's the point, there are no more easy ways to put pressure on Putin. We are all going to feel a lot of pain before things get better.

What is happening to the Russian people is tragic, but it pales in comparison to what the average Ukrainian is experiencing (shortages of food, medicine, water and basic shelter, psychological terror, maimings, deaths).

We have no other means to put pressure on Putin save arming Ukraine or attacking Russia.

[account42]

> I think it's only a matter of time until the US and Germany stop buying gas from Russia. It's going to cause a lot of pain, especially for us in Germany where nearly a third of gas is imported from Russia.

We are going to feel a lot of pain anyway and more the longer that this goes on. Gas prices are already through the roof. Ukraine and Russia are both major grain exporters, meaning this war will have a devastating impact around the world this year. We should be doing everything we can to make sure it stops sooner rather than later even if it means more pain now.

[lowkey]

Sure we do. Currently we are giving Putin up to a Billion USD per day to buy his oil and gas.

If we cut off this market it would cripple Putin’s war in Ukraine much more effectively than arming Ukrainians on the ground.

Add in energy subsidies to affected customers in need of economic support to offset the inevitable increase in oil/gas prices in the short-term and we can blunt the worst of the pain on regular Europeans.

Why is this proposal not even worth considering? Broad economic sanctions are most definitely not the only option to pressure Putin.

[dragonwriter]

> Currently we are giving Putin up to a Billion USD per day to buy his oil and gas.

Except, even without sanctions on oil & gas, no one is buying the oil.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/03/investing/russia-oil-sanction...

[lowkey]

Thank you for making my point about dis-information in a time of war. This is fake news by CNN. It is easy to disprove and it isn’t the only example from western media.

For example 6 days ago The NY Times reported that Shell had stopped buying oil from Russia [0] but that was also fake news.

Shell is now defending their decision to buy 100 metric tons of aural crude from Russia according to multiple reports in the past 24 hours. [1]

Nothing changed, It was all just PR spin to manipulate public opinion. It looks like it worked.

In war the first casualty is the truth.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/28/business/russia-oil-compa...

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/shell-buys-r...