A month and half into Russia’s war against Ukraine, Western sanctions policy met an expected obstacle. After taking almost unimaginable steps, like closing air traffic, blocking dollar settlements of a number of Russian banks, disconnecting them from SWIFT, seizing most of the Central Bank’s assets, and even adding to the sanction lists — the West paused over the issue of energy imports. Even there, not all nations of the West stopped in their tracks. The Americans, whose former presidential candidate John McCain once called Russia a «gas station masquerading as a country,» decisively announced an embargo on Russian oil and gas, which just last week was unanimously approved by the Senate. However, it is one thing for the United States, which imported 3.4% of its oil consumption from Russia last year and has not imported Russian gas at all since 2019. It is quite another matter for Europe, where in some countries contracts with Moscow provide up to 2/3 of the oil used and all the gas consumed.
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