text/Mulan
Global political disputes are like a big drama, with tortuous and exciting scenes being staged every day. Former Russian President Medvedev posted a picture on social media, which is a still from the American thriller "The Shining". The hero Jack Torrance was frozen in the snow and ice, his head and face were frozen, and his eyes were turned pale. Medvedev also specially added a text: "Finally, we made a decision on setting a price ceiling for Russian oil..." Obviously, Medvedev was mocking Western countries .
G7 and Australia jointly announced that it will set a price limit to Russia's oil exports, at $60 per barrel, effective as soon as the 5th of this month. The member states of the EU also reached an agreement on setting the upper limit of Russian oil export prices. According to some Western officials, this is the toughest sanctions imposed on Russia so far.
The West's actions are very hateful. For many years, the Western World public opinion machine has promoted it like this: the West is a free world and pursues free trade. Moreover, Western countries led by the United States have always fooled third countries such as China and have tried to forcibly transplant the so-called "free trade" on the third country. To put it bluntly, the West is to force these countries to completely liberalize their markets to facilitate economic plunder. But now, the West is completely ignoring its appearance and joining forces to set a framework for Russia - to sell oil to the West, it is not allowed to be based on the market price, but the West must have the final say.
This move in the West will definitely cause harm to Russia, after all, the oil industry is one of Russia's economic pillars. Since the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, amid the noise of sanctions in the West, Russia's energy exports to the EU have not stopped. Oil exports alone have earned more than US$70 billion in the EU, which is more than Russia's military budget in the past year. This is an important reason why Russia can support the current war. After this price limit, Russia's revenue will definitely decrease.
The problem is that sanctions have always been a double-edged sword, and sanctions on Russia will inevitably harm the West itself. The West is too dependent on Russia's energy, and Russia's energy exports are becoming increasingly diversified. Since the outbreak of the conflict, Russia's energy exports to Asian countries such as China and India have soared. Take India as an example. At the beginning of this year, before the war began, Russia's crude oil exports to India were only about 25,000 barrels per day. However, by mid-June, this import volume exceeded 600,000 barrels per day, more than 20 times. Ironically, every day, a large number of oil tankers are driving from India to Europe. It turns out that Europe is still buying Russian oil, but it is just that Indian middlemen make the difference in price.
On the issue of oil exports, if the West must compete with Russia now, even if Russia has suffered major losses, I believe that it can withstand it, at least it can withstand it far more than the West. Recently, Ulyanov, the permanent representative of Russia's international organization in Vienna, responded coldly: "From this year, Europe will have no Russian oil." The Russian-Ukrainian conflict, everyone knows that this is a war in Russia to fight against the entire Western hegemony system. After the war has been fought for so long, the West has just been huddled behind the scenes and “handed” Ukraine and dared not end up directly confronting Russia.
Another battlefield is sanctions on Russia. Since the conflict, the West has imposed sanctions on Russia in a variety of ways and is huge, but few can be truly implemented. Energy and food trade between Russia and Europe are very enthusiastic in open and secretly. Nowadays, the West has united to set a price limit on Russian oil exports, which is obviously to touch Russia's reverse scale. Perhaps, the real battle between Russia and the West has only begun so far.
Russia recently released a news, which is very intriguing. Kremlin spokesman Peskov claimed that at "the right time", President Putin will visit the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. and noted, “because it is part of the Russian Federation."It is obvious that Putin's visit to the "new territory" in eastern Ukraine is a great enough stimulus to Ukraine and the West, which shows that Russia's strong will to win the West in a decisive battle. It seems that as the decision to set limits on oil export prices for Russia is made, the game between Russia and the West will become increasingly fierce.
