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by ed_balls·4y ago·view on hn ↗
Without natural resources Russia GDP would be lower than Polish. I think the whole reason for this war is the green transformation of the world. Military dictatorship played the wrong game and didn't mange to reform the country (it seems to be a case for all countries run by military).

This is Proxy war with US/Nato to get a trade deal in exchange for balancing China with military power (last card they've got). France and Germany were OK with this - cheap resources, you can move pouting factories to Siberia, production would be more competitive than Chinese.

US and rest were not happy about this.

3 comments
> I think the whole reason for this war is the green transformation of the world.

I think you're on the right track but slightly off.

NG is "green" by EU standards and Russia does make it's money from NG sales to the EU. I think the piece you're missing is that Ukraine's current government is more friendly to the EU and Ukraine has massive, untapped NG reserves[1]. I have to think that the EU is eyeing Ukrainian NG in order to cut Russia out of it's economy.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_in_Ukraine

> I have to think that the EU is eyeing Ukrainian NG in order to cut Russia out of it's economy.

That sounds like something that would take decades..

And a few decades from now the EU plans to be carbon neutral.

North stream 2 was in reach. If this is what they wanted why start this proxy war?
Furthermore, gas is considered "Green" by EU and would have provided a steady source of income to Russia [1-2].

[1] https://www.dw.com/en/european-commission-declares-nuclear-a...

[2] https://time.com/6139049/europe-natural-gas-green-energy

North stream 2 has very little to do with this whole conflict. Because mining is quite expensive in Siberia, Russian gas may not be price competitive as soon as 2030. Renewable energy is getting cheaper. At some point, natural gas turbines will use hydrogen produced with nuclear and renewables to balance the peaks.
Russia’s GDP (per capital) is about 30 % below Poland’s