US Scrambles For ‘Contingency Plans’ From Energy Firms On Gas Supply Crunch Amid Russia-Ukraine Crisis
It appears that both Washington and Kiev are still convinced that Russia is preparing a military offensive against Ukraine to happen at some point by the close of January. Despite Western estimates echoed over the past couple months that some 100,000 Russian troops are currently near the border, Moscow has been vehement in its denial that it’s planning any kind of invasion.
But Moscow is pointing the finger right back at NATO, with on Sunday Putin’s spokesman admitting Russian troops are on the border because it can no longer “tolerate” NATO’s own “gradual invasion” of Ukraine.
Sunday comments by Dmitry Peskov were firm in their denunciation of NATO’s continued expansion right up to Russia’s doorstep. “Unfortunately, not fixed in a juridical, in a legally binding guaranteeing document, but it — there was a guarantee that NATO would never… expand its military infrastructure or political infrastructure eastwards,” Peskov told CNN.
“Unfortunately, the opposite thing started to happen since then, and NATO’s military infrastructure started to get closer and closer to the borders of the Russian Federation,” he added. Russia now sees its national security as directly threatened and “endangered” – the Kremlin spokesman added.
Within the past days of ratcheting tit-for-tat accusations, it’s also been revealed that the Biden administration is seeking to reassure European partners of ‘contingency plans’ should a Ukraine-Russia conflict disrupt the transfer of energy supplies to the European Union. Russia is source fpr up to one-third of all of Europe’s critical gas supplies.
The Biden White House is still threatening severe sanctions, which also holds the potential for Russia using its energy supplies as a retaliatory weapon…
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