Day: January 6, 2025

Through wars and military aggression, Russian President Vladimir Putin has sought a legacy of imperialistic unification. Instead, his twenty-five-year reign leaves Russia without a vital revenue stream from pipeline gas sales to Europe—with the last of the transit agreements having expired on January 1 after Ukraine refused to renew it. Russia’s state-owned energy giant Gazprom has seen billions in losses as transit through Ukraine shrunk from 130 billion cubic meters (bcm) in the early 2000s to a meager 15 bcm in 2023. While future major long-term deals with Kyiv are out of the question following Russia’s illegal and unjustified atrocities in Ukraine, the window is still open for Russia to sell smaller volumes of gas on the spot market.  

This puts Europe at a crossroads. Russia had succeeded in fostering a narrative that Europe’s economic prosperity hinges on cheap Russian energy sources by strategically monopolizing the European gas market with discounted prices. This myth was busted when Europe paid a trillion dollars in 2022 to mitigate the energy crisis manufactured by Moscow to blackmail Europe to abandon Ukraine. Europe now has two main options. It can put an end to Russian piped gas in perpetuity and build a secure, resilient economy with alternative supplies. Or it can cave under economic pressures and backslide into dependency through a patchwork of deals with short-term discounts.

Traders across Europe could ignore the lessons from the last three years and find creative ways to bring back some Russian gas. Proposals to mask Russian gas as Azeri to make the deal more politically palatable are being explored as well. The Baltics and Poland have diversified their energy sources beyond the point of no return, while other European nations, particularly areas hardest hit by high energy prices, are at risk of returning to deals with Moscow unless the European Union (EU) sets in a clear, legally binding deadline for Russian piped gas in its mandate on the future of Russian energy sources. Landlocked countries such as Slovakia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Austria now have access to liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals, but the lure of discounted prices remains.  

Securing short-term, smaller-volume spot market deals through Ukraine could be feasible if third parties could work with Moscow and Kyiv separately to negotiate a new transit fee and transmission system operations logistics, complete technical upgrades, and—most importantly—ensure the geopolitical appetite in Kyiv for future flows. Another variable to consider is that Gazprom is drowning in ongoing litigation and several multibillion-euro arbitration rulings against it. Gazprom didn’t deliver on the take-or-pay condition of its now-expired contract with Ukraine, only paying Ukraine for the 15 bcm of gas delivered rather than the minimum amount of 40 bcm. In any other sector, European businesses would avoid any future dealings with such a company. While the prospect of continuing to purchase Russian gas provides an illusion of short-term economic reprieve, it would be a costly and dangerous choice down the road. 

Although Europe’s energy security, competitiveness, and decarbonization trilemma has no easy, cheap, or quick solutions, this historic decoupling is an unprecedented opportunity to forge a secure, resilient economy independent of Russian reliance and threats. The timing is opportune, as well: as the new competitiveness and innovation-focused European Commission takes the helm, Europe is poised for bold actions and a decisive policy on the future of Russian energy sources. There is no better time to sanction Gazprom’s piped gas to create certainty for other suppliers and send a strong message to European traders. Sanctions would also put an end to the 15 bcm of Russian piped gas deliveries through the TurkStream pipeline—cutting off all piped Russian gas deliveries to the EU. At the same time, an EU ban on Russian LNG, which has grown in export volumes to the EU, would not make much of an impact on Russia, as LNG is a fungible commodity with multiple alternative global routes, unlike piped gas. Instead, the EU and its allies should expand sanctions on Russia’s LNG projects, financing, and ships, as well as imposing additional technology export restrictions to curb LNG revenues and project expansion. 

Most importantly, energy will be at the core of transatlantic trade negotiations with US President-elect Donald Trump. Goodwill messaging aside, the EU can’t commit to buying more LNG, since these transactions are handled by the free market. But the EU can create a predictable investment environment and clarity about future demand by sanctioning Russian piped gas—likely leading to the EU buying more gas from the United States, which would be music to Trump’s ears. Moreover, Moscow’s depleted revenues and new sanctions would put Ukraine in a stronger negotiating position regardless of how the war progresses. Europe must act now to protect its future economic prosperity from the whims of Putin’s geopolitical agenda.  

Olga Khakova is the deputy director for European energy security at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center. 

The post The Russia-Ukraine energy divorce offers a chance for Europe to take control of its energy security  appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On Christmas day, a Nigerian military aircraft bombed two villages, killing at least 10 civilians and wounding many more.

The airstrike in Nigeria’s northwest is the latest in a long-running series of lethal errant attacks by the government of Nigeria, one of the United States’ closest allies in Africa and the recipient of billions of dollars in U.S. weaponry, including warplanes and bombs.

American lawmakers have called out the U.S. and Nigerian governments for the frequent noncombatant deaths, urging increased accountability, stronger protections for civilians, and limitations on American arms sales. Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., has been one of the leading voices, repeatedly calling on the Biden administration to, for instance, scuttle a nearly $1 billion attack helicopter deal with Nigeria.

“For millions of Nigerians, Christmas marks a special time for joy, festivities, and coming together with family and loved ones. It’s devastating that this year nearly a dozen families in Nigeria were mourning their loved ones instead of celebrating on Christmas Day,” Jacobs, a founding member of Congress’s Protection of Civilians in Conflict Caucus, told The Intercept. “I continue to be deeply concerned by the trend of civilian harm from Nigerian military operations. With the right guardrails in place, these tragedies can be prevented.”

The Nigerian military has a long history of killing civilians in its battle against militants and “bandits,” and has repeatedly denied responsibility for airstrikes that have killed innocent people. It has frequently been accused of covering up civilian deaths, as well, including running what a 2023 investigation by Nigeria’s Premium Times called “a systemic propaganda scheme to keep the atrocities of its troops under wraps.”

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The U.S. has repeatedly raised the subject of civilian casualties with Nigeria’s government. Last year, in the wake of a December 2023 attack in Kaduna State that killed more than 120 civilians, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly discussed the issue with Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu.

When pressed by The Intercept following Blinken’s visit on what actions the State Department would take if Nigeria’s military continued to kill civilians, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee said at the time, “I’m not going to get into hypotheticals.”

Between 2000 and 2022, the U.S. provided, facilitated, or approved more than $2 billion in security aid, including weapons and equipment sales, to Nigeria, according to a report by Brown University’s Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies and the Center for International Policy’s Security Assistance Monitor, a Washington think tank. This includes the delivery of 12 Super Tucano warplanes as part of a $593 million package, approved by the State Department in 2017, that also included bombs and rockets.

In those same years, hundreds of Nigerian airstrikes killed thousands of Nigerians. A 2017 attack on a displaced persons camp in Rann, Nigeria, killed more than 160 civilians, many of them children. A subsequent Intercept investigation revealed that the attack was referred to as an instance of “U.S.-Nigerian operations” in a formerly secret U.S. military document.

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Since then, aerial attacks on civilians have been relentless. In September 2021, the Nigerian Air Force admitted that it attacked a village, killing 10 civilians and injuring another 20. That April, a Nigerian military helicopter reportedly launched indiscriminate attacks on homes, farms, and a school. A reported Nigerian airstrike on a village in neighboring Niger in February 2022 killed at least 12 civilians. Another attack in August 2022 left at least eight civilians dead. Witnesses and local officials said a December 2022 strike killed at least 64 people, including civilians. An attack in January 2023 killed 39 civilians and injured at least six others. And the December 2023 strike in Kaduna killed more than 120 villagers celebrating Maulud, the birthday of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, according to Amnesty International.

A 2023 Reuters analysis of data compiled by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a U.S.-based armed violence monitoring group, found that more than 2,600 people were killed in 248 airstrikes outside the most active war zones in Nigeria during the previous five years. Most victims were identified as “communal militia,” a catchall category that includes local self-defense forces, criminal gangs, and so-called bandits.

Last April, a Nigerian airstrike on a village in the country’s northwest killed 33 civilians. In September, another airstrike in Kaduna killed 24 people.

The State Department did not answer questions about U.S. monitoring of American weapons transferred to Nigeria. For nine months, the department has also failed to provide a substantive reply about what actions would be (or have been) taken now that Nigeria’s continued killing of civilians is no longer a “hypothetical.”

Jacobs, the California representative, called for more accountability from America’s key West African ally. “I urge the Nigerian government to take concrete steps toward preventing harm and increasing transparency,” she said, “starting with the completion and public release of its investigation into this incident, a public release of the investigative report into the December 2023 Kaduna airstrike, and adoption and implementation of a civilian harm mitigation and response action plan.”

The post Nigeria’s Military Gets Billions in U.S. Aid. On Christmas Day, It Bombed Its Own Civilians Again. appeared first on The Intercept.