Europe must choose between Russian fuel and Ukraine

London/Brussels – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned that Europe would soon need to choose whether to accept the fuel from Russia through new pipelines or support Ukraine for peace and stability. Europe is currently facing a significant fuel shortage. The prices of natural gas have escalated by almost 250%. While the fuel crisis is deepening in Europe, there is a growing fear of a potential conflict being sparked as Russia has deployed around 100000 military troops on the Ukrainian border.

Since a few days, western countries are consistently drawing attention to Russia’s aggressive policies and movements. Russia has been accused of causing a fuel crisis in Europe. The issue of illegal migrant intrusion has festered on the Belarus-Poland border, which is also said to be planned by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Ukraine and other analysts feel that the massive deployment on the Ukraine border is a part of Russia’s conspiracy.

Against this background, the warning issued by the British Prime Minister becomes significant. In the past, Russia used the fuel trade as a weapon during the conflict between Crimea and East Ukraine in 2014. Fear of Russia repeating the same strategy in case of new conflict has been expressed. Currently, Russia supplies more than 30% of the fuel demand of Europe. Considering the upcoming winter to increase the fuel demand and existing fuel shortage, Russia could use the situation to its advantage and use the fuel supply as a weapon.

Despite being aware of this, Germany has jointly built the Nord Stream-2 pipeline with Russia. Although, the pipeline is expected to be operational in a few months. Against this background, if a conflict is sparked between Russia and Ukraine, the European countries could face hardships and the British Prime Minister’s statement underlines the same fear.