Joke on Russian internet: "Putin showing Merkel and Macron the salary charts of Rosneft and Gazprom." 
Dependence on dictatorships like Putin's Russia is a package deal. You can't separate business from human rights and defending your democracy. The corruption spreads like a gas leak until it explodes.
Europe can't separate energy or business from politics when Putin won't. The list of ways to defend and deter includes "dictatorship substitution". I wrote about it specifically re energy in 2015: energyfuse.org/garry-kasparov…
The EU pretends it can unilaterally declare peace with Putin, a failed model Obama also attempted with Cuba, Iran, Russia. Entrenched dictatorships don't want peace. They need chaos & conflict to distract from and scapegoat their domestic disasters.
In the WaPo in 2014, I explained differences between China needing allies and Putin needing enemies. China still needed its people. Putin doesn't care. I expanded on it in my 2015 book Winter Is Coming. washingtonpost.com/posteverything…
China and Putin's Russia have taken trillions from free world markets with no strings attached and invested it in creating modern police states, funding repression, invasions, and genocides. Your hands are not clean.
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