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Comment by nmehner | Hacker News Reader

Do you really think so?

Russia has no way of winning this conflict. Their military is facing huge losses (increasing their demographic problems), there is no way they can keep Ukraine occupied and they have given up on regime change. The Russian economy is in shambles because of the sanctions (which hit a lot harder because of strong ties with western markets) and will never recover. Europe has accelerated its departure from fossil fuels.

Putin has fired some generals and placed the head of the FSB's foreign intelligence branch under house arrest.

How can this be seen other then a total strategic blunder of Putin? Do you really think Xi is looking at this mess and be like "Yeah, give me one of those, too."?

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I would like to be as optimistic as you but this seems contrary to the article and the comments in that thread suggesting the sanctions on oil still have not shown their effects, and it has just started to make Europe question its Gas dependency. Departure will take at least a decade if chosen. As stated until then Europe will not be able to really sanction Russia.

That is if you see sanctions as an all or nothing approach. For Europe the approach will have to be to reduce consumption step by step. This is not as glorious as stopping all imports in one day, but it will hurt Russia nevertheless.

Also this process already started before the current crisis. In Germany heat pump sales have been exploding : https://www.waermepumpe.de/fileadmin/_processed_/2/4/csm_Dia... . In Norway the share of electric cars in new cars is at 85% and 16% of the existing fleet is already electric. This starts to become visible in oil consumption for traffic as well: https://www.ssb.no/en/energi-og-industri/olje-og-gass/statis... (although the economic recovery after Covid masks this somewhat). In all of Europe 10% of all new cars are electric and that share will increase fast.

The article only looks at the supply side of things, but long term the more important part is demand.

These changes won't effect the outcome of the current crisis, but for Russia the coming decade will show what foolish decision this invasion was and future leaders will hopefully think twice about destroying their own country.

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