Thread by @kamilkazani

Many argued that Europe can't stop buying Russian oil and gas and thus will continue funding Russian war machine. Well, it seems problem solved itself. Today Putin declared he'll sell Russian gas to unfriendly countries only for rubles

That makes position of those advocating for continuing this import much weaker. Just yesterday if you wanted to continue buying Russian gas you could simply keep status quo, which is easy procedure-wise. But now you'll have to abandon it and make active effort to keep import

Just yesterday those advocating for keeping the gas import from Russia had a high ground in a short term perspective. They could sabotage the efforts of those wanting to stop it while Russia keeps fighting. But now it's the opposite

Now opponents of gas import from Russia absolutely can sabotage the efforts of those who strive to continue it. You simply need to sabotage their every attempt to switch to rubles to pay for Russian gas until Russia loses. Under the EU vetocracy that's certainly a high ground

There is however a problem here. Russian gas continues flowing via Ukraine and Ukraine gets transit fees that help fund its war efforts. Absurd as it may sound, that's reality. Thus new sources of funding must be secured to compensate this loss, so that Ukraine can keep resisting

Russia Today chief Simonyan commented:

"Next step - barter payments with airplanes, high speed trains, whatever we need"

Sounds dumb. But it reflects the weak point of Russian economy: machinery. Russia desperately needs imported machinery and will soon be crumbling without it