So the issue is that many of their nuclear plants require long maintenance downtime simultaneously? That seems like something that could have been foreseen.
It’s also chicken-decisions coming home to roost: maintenance delays due to covid, poor maintenance conditions leading to strikes, and training of new maintenance staff had apparently been slashed because an expected shift to renewables means you apparently don’t need to train staff to maintain 50+ nuclear plants expected to run for decades more.
Due to the response to Covid, not due to Covid itself.
The Russian reaction to the eastward expansion of NATO right up to Russia's borders has been foreseen and warned about since the 90s, including by top level US officials such as George Kennan and William Burns and by informed & insightful commentators such as John Mearsheimer. [1,2]
The Russian government made very clear protests in December of 2021 (the last in a long line of such protests) that they felt existentially threatened and would have to act.
> and the associated general energy crisis in Europe
Many people also warned about how stupid the sanctions that Europe imposed on Russia were, with the very high risk that they would harm European states (and their peoples) much more than Russia itself. One person I remember making such warnings in advance or concurrently was Philip Pilkington in UnHerd. [3,4,5]
[1] https://www.cato.org/commentary/many-predicted-nato-expansio...
[2] https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-follows-decades-of-w...
[3] https://unherd.com/thepost/sanctions-wont-hurt-russia/
[4] https://unherd.com/thepost/oil-and-gas-sanctions-hurt-the-we...
[5] https://unherd.com/thepost/gas-embargoes-will-hurt-europe-mu...
No, Russian propaganda will variably claim NATO, Nazis and Jews are responsible, depending on what bigger fool they are trying to address. Well, one bit!
1. George Kennan - "best known as an advocate of a policy of containment of Soviet expansion during the Cold War" [1]
2. William Burns - United States Deputy Secretary of State (2011-2014), Director of the Central Intelligence Agency since 2021 [2]
(In parenthesis, I will also note the very silly but oft-repeated mistake of conflating Putin with Russia in the comment above. Russia does not act on the whims or personal ambitions of Putin; indeed, Putin stays in power largely by responding to the needs and desires of the Russian people, and the pressure inside Russia for him to act against the existential threat building on the Russian/Ukrainian border has been very strong and he has faced criticism for not acting earlier.)
The explanation about dictator's desire for power(now also life) is more simple than geopolitics and cultural suppression.
And about the needs of the Russian people: I don't remember Russians having a debate about starting a full scale war. Maybe Putin thinks its what they need but if there was a real debate we can safely assume people would prioritize having in-house toilets and a million other things that are suddenly became not so important.
A.) that many things cannot be easily foreseen which includes record draughts and the Ukraine conflict.
B.) It makes sense to have a diversified energy mix where no single source is used predominantly.
I don't know. These record draughts are directly tied to climate change and I have known since the 90's that the Pentagon and the UN knew climate change would bring wars, population displacement et resources problems. I think that's where we are.
Without these two things we most likely wouldn't have blackouts
>What had not been foreseen was the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the associated general energy crisis in Europe...
>Can't forsee covid though, nor the war in Ukraine...
No-one in the corridors of power in the EU or UK, apparently.
The whole conflict is just the other party calling bluff. But both the West and Russia have invested so much neither is going to settle. So they up the stakes and get dragged downwards. The only thing left is to complain that “it’s unfair the the US is profiting”.
But we need electricity and industry.