France and Russia don’t fully trust NATO and Sanctions may not apply

Putin the President of Russia has played a very decisive move in meeting with Macron the President of France, and in doing so has pointed out that France also does not fully trust NATO or all of European states. In negotiations finding common ground is key and Putin knows this too well.

Russia has asked NATO and its partners for a number of things pertaining to security guarantees and most have gone unanswered. Macron was very eager to get an agreement that the build-up of troops and equipment would be paused as he said it shows aggression. Macron was also hoping to get Russia to pull back from the Ukraine border. Yet as said before and many times, we (Russia) are on our territory.

In the end, a couple of positives, 1, they are friendly and speaking. 2, each is willing to speak about the difficult things. It is so invading to have the USA wanting to be so involved in a small local issue. Ukraine should have stuck to the Minks agreement they signed in 2015, if they did this could have been dealt with. But no, they complained so much and begged to have a membership with NATO. So much so that it was a bit of an embarrassment.

I clearly do not see how the USA putting effort into issues so far from their borders will help them. One could only believe what they have said: “We are sending troops and military sully to support our NATO partners”. The USA has over and over again proved their inability to manage or offer a suitable change in any of the areas they have fought in. In fact, sadly they have made a huge mess of it all.

It is good to see France offer to step up in talks. Turkey has also done the same. In fact, Turkey is probably the most suitable local mediator to offer the best for each Ukraine and Russia.

Yet a problem is going after Russia with threats of sanctions. Russia is not a country in which to hang threats on their doorknob. If such a thing is pressed they will quickly develop the idea that “they threaten = they do”

Sanction to stop the Russian Federation to sell the products they produce hurt the Russian economy.  That said, it also makes this inconvenient for the people who desire the product or services. It is one thing if you can get the product or services from another provider.  But in many cases, Russia has some items not easily accessible.  For example, the rocket engines that get rockets to space, are the best that have been developed so far.

In addition, oil and gas products from Russia are very accessible to European customers.  It seems that a few countries depend on as much as 80 percent of their gas consumption and some other 40 percent. Due to the disdain in the latter part of 2021 many of the European customers find it imperative to diversify more and not be so reliant on Russian products.  This gives other countries the green light to find ways to transport their products to European markets and make them available even if these products cost twice as much. I do find it hard to believe that some European customers or "ok" with such huge cost increases.  Perhaps this is merely the political drivers speaking, and in it, they will use fear to alight the consumers to tell them why they "need" to pay a higher price. No different than keeping a counties military in wars around the globe it presses the taxpayers to pay the yearly 770-billion-dollar price tag to keep the war machine going. If there is no war, then the need to put such expenditures into the military is much harder to sell.

At the onset of the various world governments telling Russia or Vladimir Putin that if Russia attacks Ukraine, they will place sanctions on them. These governments went so far to say the sanctions would be the toughest that Russia has ever seen. So, reports went as far as to say they would cut Russia off from the SWIFT. Cutting Russia off from SWIFT will only hurt European countries as they would not be able to pay their gas bill. So, as expected in the past few days all the European governments have said sanctions would not include cutting off the SWIFT. 

So, in this process, one can only expect that Russia is ready for all sanctions as it has been my experience the Russians are not so hopeful but lean to being set on the worst possible track forward. This way they will have no disappointments and be ready for everything.