But then, as Estonian prime minister said recently - sure, gas is expensive, but freedom is priceless.
Typical politicians excuse, tbh. It's not like this has any relation to actual freedoms, only bs political slogans.
As much as I also hate political slogans, at least I'm not seeing a problem with this one given the context.
Europe is just now seeing the effect of being less free than it's population thought it was.
Sure it sucks when one invades another one and there are reasons to prefer one vs another (eg. I'd rather be in EU than in Russia or China; I'd rather be in the Bahamas than in EU) but the people's freedom is limited under any government.
I used to think that all we need in Government is fresh wind which will solve most our problems, but I'm realizing that age isn't by itself either the problem or the solution. See Biden for old age or Europe for young age destructive leadership. Apparently not all wind is fresh and some of it is rotten and smells like sewage.
I'm completely baffled at how people cannot comprehend basic co-dependencies in the economies, supply chain or whatever other part that is happening. The whole "we need to suffer to show a moral lesson" is easy for people to say that have had nothing to sacrifice and never had to work hard for anything in their life while never in history have so many people dropped out of the middle class in European societies.
EDIT: Don't drink your own kool-aid, is a good summary I've been given about the whole situation. European leaders massively overestimating their own importance and capability in the world(both economic and military) based on their own inflated GDP numbers and MIC commercials.
EDIT 2: It's unfortunate that even in such a platform there is no rational thinking about something that is objectively true based on propaganda that actually came from the other side. "Russia is this" "Russia is that".
Facts are still facts.
You need fertilizer to feed people. Fertilizers are byproducts of Gas production. Fertilizer prices have been rising because of dis-incentivization of hydrocarbons. Nuclear is still a lot cleaner than most of the green energy alternatives. It didn't start in February 2022 even though the white house would like you to believe that[1].
Even the Ombudsman for human rights of Ukraine that was recently fired for constantly lying, said that she has been lying about Russian war crimes to turn public opinion against Russia[2].
EDIT 3: The US DoJ used the FCPA(Foreign Corrupt Practices Act) to threaten the Alstom leadership to sell off to GE. GE then buys the nuclear business and dismantles its plants in 2019 contrary to previous promises[3]. For all the talk of "oh we'll just buy it back", it's unclear what exactly is being bought back, how much it costs to rebuild capabilities that were destroyed and how much of the IP is actually sold back. My guess is, very little. It's odd that people act like it's just a little blip, when it's very clearly an geopolitical attack on one of the most important parts of french infrastructure.
[1] https://agrilifetoday.tamu.edu/2022/01/12/report-analyzes-re...
[2] https://lb.ua/news/2022/06/03/518875_lyudmila_denisova_azovt...
[3] https://www.entreprendre.fr/alstom-general-electric-le-piege...
Sure, but you also can't help chaotic, random events taking place that make any potential plans to do that go up in smoke. The alternative in this specific issue (i.e. not standing up to Russia) is likely just further dependency on oil/natural gas from Russia and eventually just being outright colonized because you are so dependent that you can't resist. Dropping off even at a high cost protects Estonian sovereignty.
Georgia was invaded in 2008 [1].
> don't deploy NATO weapons and feel okay?
Estonia and other countries near Russia historically didn't really have a ton of NATO weapons deployments specifically because NATO wasn't intent on aggravating Russia. Training exercises from time to time because they're allies but that's about it. Troop buildups and weapons deployments have strictly been in response to the war in Ukraine which was launched by Russia. Sovereign states have the right under international law (law that Russia signed by the way) to choose their own defense arrangements and conduct their own affairs.
Maybe it's not a failure to understand. Maybe it's a symptom of the world-wide denial-of-service attack against the very concept of democracy. It doesn't cost much to pay someone to make government look bad. If you're an autocrat, it's kind of a no-brainer.
Those countries reside on the border of Russia and logistics in operations were fairly easy and cheap. That fueled the business and money flow for may years.
Check out https://data.stat.ee/profile/country/ee/?locale=en. Russia was the second biggest trading partner, having Finland as the first. Surprisingly, if you check the trading structure of Finland, it's mostly the same Russian goods.
Russia accounts in 2B trading balance of Estonian import. This is a lot for a small country. Pretty much from the beginning of 200x the most money there were made either on raw re-export of Russian goods or processing and exporting.
If you have an idea of how to replace those 2B without rising costs tremendously, please share.
So much of modern political history is taking the economic gains for granted and assuming they will stay consistent (or only be a minor inconvenience) despite an endless march of downward pressure on many of the things that made us productive and progress.
For a long time the only thing that has masked it is the gains from globalization (even though the a big percentage of the returns often only went to megacorps and the well connected). But that will either reach its limits or conflicts will disrupt it. Then we see the costs of crippling of industries, getting rid knowledge, or misalign incentives.
That is misleading. The nuclear facilities were not sold to GE, only Alstom Power Systems, which engineers turbines. (The nuclear engineering part was never sold.) Furthermore, it was sold for $13B and is being rebought by the French EDF €175M.