On Tuesday, April 12, 2022 at 1:20:39 AM UTC+8, David P. wrote:
> Putin’s Ukraine Invasion Is About Energy and Natural Resources
> By David Knight Legg, April 5, 2022, WSJ
>
> Much of the current analysis of Russia’s war on Ukraine accepts at
> face value Moscow’s stated premises for the invasion. Putin claimed
> from the beginning that his special military action was a determined
> attempt to reunite the old Russo-Ukrainian territorial and ethnic
> communities under his rule. Some in the West have even bought into
> his gripe that years of North American Treaty Organization expansion
> threatened Russian territorial integrity.
>
> The prevailing narrative now is that Putin has foolishly overreached:
> The Ukrainians fought harder than he expected and his forces have bogged
> down due to poor command structures and lack of basic operational controls.
> He has had to learn the hard way about information asymmetries because no
> one tells a dictator the whole truth. The West, according to the narrative,
> needs to provide him with a peace process: Ukraine guarantees it won’t try
> to join NATO and Moscow absorbs Donetsk and Luhansk—as well as what’s left
> of Mariupol—into Mother Russia.
>
> This is dangerous thinking. Putin’s purposes are multifaceted, and he's
> adaptive. There is more than one way to dominate Ukraine. Under cover of
> the wider conflict, Putin is taking full control of Ukraine’s vast,
> extremely valuable energy assets and intends to integrate them into the
> Russian supply chain on which Europe now depends. China and India will
> eventually depend upon it too.
>
> There are 4 reasons to think this war is, or will default to, an energy
> heist. The first is Russian national interest. Taking Ukraine’s energy
> would give Putin the second-largest natural-gas reserves in Europe, worth
> over $1 trillion at today’s prices. It would give him oil and condensate
> worth as much as $400 billion, and most of Ukraine’s coal—the sixth-largest
> reserve base in the world. Additionally, he would consolidate an extraordinary
> strategic geopolitical advantage with ports on the Black Sea and Sea of Azov,
> putting Russia at the center of global energy supply to the vast European
> and Asian markets for the foreseeable future.
>
> The second reason to think this war is a resource grab is Putin’s tactical
> focus. Russian troops are now concentrated in the parts of Ukraine that hold
> 90% of its energy resources. They have seized the Donbas and control Luhansk
> and Donetsk. They are embedded along the Black Sea coast and focusing extreme
> pressure on Mariupol. If the fighting stopped now, Putin would control all of
> Ukraine’s offshore oil, its critical ports on the Azov Sea, the Kerch Strait,
> 80% of the Black Sea coastline, and all critical energy-processing and shipping
> infrastructure.
>
> The third reason is the treatment of Mariupol. If Putin’s core objective were
> the reunification of ethnic Russians, then pounding into dust the country’s
> largest urban center of pro-Russian Ukrainians would be an odd way to manage
> that reunification. If this is about control of Ukraine’s energy, however, that
> city is the essential land bridge to his Crimean assets and the critical port
> from which to ship resources from Donetsk and Luhansk.
>
> Finally, he’s done this before. Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 gave him
> Sevastopol and Ukraine’s exceptionally rich Black Sea assets—a windfall worth
> hundreds of billions of dollars. He passed these assets to Gazprom and declared
> an exclusive economic zone in the Black Sea, defended by the Russian navy..
>
> Sadly, Putin learned from Crimea that the West protests, then forgets.
> Despite the imposition of sanctions, European Union imports of Russian energy,
> enhanced by the annexed assets, continued unabated. Europe is now paying Russia
> over $100 billion a year, and is on track to import 90% of the energy it
> consumes by 2030.
>
> Europe is so dependent on Russian gas partly because of climate considerations.
> Any serious commitment to reducing global emissions from coal requires natural
> gas. The U.S. has led the world in this regard, reducing emissions by over
> 800 million tons while promoting economic growth by displacing thermal coal
> with gas to power the electrical grid. Coal burns at almost twice the carbon
> intensity of gas per unit of energy, so retrofitting European grids for gas
> significantly reduces emissions and provides baseload power that renewables
> can’t. But while the U.S. produced gas domestically, Europe off-shored its
> gas supply to Russia and banned domestic fracking and other energy production.
> The result was dependency.
>
> Despotic regimes control most of the world’s energy via state companies.
> The democratic West relies on private companies operating in free markets,
> which have driven most of the innovation in cleaner fuels, carbon capture,
> nuclear and hydrogen. As NATO reorients itself, member states should pursue
> trade deals connecting the vast supply and technological innovations of the
> U.S. and Canada to Europe. The best way to beat this particular thief is to
> steal back his market.
>
> Mr. Legg is an adviser to investment and political-risk firms. He is a
> former principal adviser to Alberta Premier Jason Kenney.
>
> https://www.wsj.com/articles/putins-ukraine-invasion-is-an-energy-heist-natural-gas-russia-ukraine-invasion-oil-nato-conflict-11649186174

Russia wants those former countries of CIS to rejoin Russia as USSR.