Russian gas costs eight times more, forum user claims

User claims Europe pays eight times more for Russian gas due to sanctions

Every time a package of measures against Moscow is announced, the same question arises. What is the cost? And there is one calculation that is repeatedly mentioned in the debate: the same gas would cost eight times more and only one-eighth of the volume would arrive. This calculation has been circulating since the summer of 2022, when an interview published on July 18th in La Vanguardia sparked the debate with an uncomfortable question: how much will this war cost? Since then, the tug-of-war over who bears the bill has only grown.

User calculates Russian gas is eight times more expensive: the arithmetic of sanctions

The argument is based on a simple comparison. If previously one price was paid for Russian gas and now eight times more is paid for one-eighth of the previous volume, according to this calculation, the result would be a loss of purchasing power for European households and industries. Some summarize it as a masterstroke of war economics: sanctions would not hit Moscow, but those who impose them.

The interviewee who originated the debate — a 51-year-old German Christian Democrat, raised by a British military father and a German mother, affiliated with the CDU at 17 — peine the discussion with a question about the cost of this war. Others see less idealism: one user replies that all that talk of values is cheap talk used to justify a bill that ends up on the final consumer's receipt.

At the heart of the dispute lies the energy dependence accumulated after decades of buying cheap gas from the eastern neighbor. One user recalls that Trump warned of this energy dependence and that it would eventually come at a cost.

Appease Russia or maintain NATO's nuclear deterrence?

One participant asks if we should not appease someone who possesses a nuclear arsenal. Another's response is blunt: the best way is to make it clear that there would be no hesitation in using it against them too, and that is why we need NATO.

This approach connects with the old mutual assured destruction, the doctrine conceived by John von Neumann according to which any use of nuclear weapons leads to the end of humanity. More than one person summarizes it as "1+1=0".

A more skeptical participant argues that they do not feel Russia has aggressed against the EU and that an aggression is attributed to it that they do not share. The same participant compares the situation to what would happen if Spain decided to ally with China.

Will there be a nuclear holocaust? What some users maintain

One user does not believe there will be more than one or two nuclear impacts, at most, in the EU. Another maintains that there will be no nuclear holocaust and that, in any case, Russia might launch a limited strike in Ukraine as a deterrent signal, because the West would not respond unless it fell on Paris or New York, which would be the end.

One user wonders if the system will survive; another replies that the elites caused World War I and World War II and sees no reason why the model they want to maintain would not survive.

One user argues that life will go on as usual and that those who work will be in the same situation in eight months, with the same feeling that nothing is moving.

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The thread continues with messages mixing criticism of sanctions, the EU, and NATO.