Source: jingsiyouwo666
Today, let me talk about the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
It has been a long time since Russia Ukraine conflict was mentioned, because since Russia captured xichansk in Ukraine’s Lugansk state on July 2, there has been no big news about the conflict between Russia and Ukraine in the field of territory contention. It seems that the war between Russia and Ukraine has become more and more meaningless. Russia has not launched a large-scale attack, and Ukraine has also claimed to launch several counter offensives, but there is no big news.
On August 7, Russia destroyed a warehouse storing 4.5 tons of ammunition in Ukraine’s Nikolaev state. On August 12, Russia used a “caliber” high-precision long-range sea based cruise missile to strike the ammunition depot in Ukraine’s Ternopol state. The ammunition depot contained shells of the anti tank missile system, man portable air defense missile system and weapon system provided by the United States and European countries to Ukraine. On August 17, Russia again attacked an ammunition depot in slavyansk, Ukraine, with high-precision weapons, destroying more than 3000 122 mm shells.
In short, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine gives people the impression that Russia is attacking Ukraine’s ammunition depot, and there is no new harvest on its territory.
There were not only new gains, but also losses. The latest news is that Russia withdrew from ikum and barakliya on September 10. At the same time, Ukraine announced that it was successful in its counter offensive and took back 3000 square kilometers of land. 3000 square kilometers, about equivalent to the area of an ordinary county in China, and this scale should not be too small. On September 11, Ukrainian President Zelensky announced that Ukraine had regained control of chekalovsk in Kharkiv state.
Some people say that Russia’s withdrawal this time is a big move, which is hard to say. No one knows what medicine the belligerents are selling. But at least on the surface, since the outbreak of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine on February 24, Russia’s offensive momentum has been weakening. At first, it gave people the impression that they wanted to capture the thief first, capture the king, occupy Kiev, and then force Ukraine to sign an alliance under the city. Then there was the withdrawal of troops from the northern region on March 31, focusing on the eastern and southern Ukraine. Then, I felt that he didn’t constantly expand his territory, but just blew up the ammunition depot of the other side. Then, on the contrary, there are losses on the territory, and Ukraine has taken back some of the places it has obtained.
This gives people a very clear feeling that the focus of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is no longer on the territory, at least for Russia.
What is the new focus of the Russian Ukrainian conflict?
In my opinion, the development track of the Russian Ukrainian conflict conforms to the general law of almost all wars, that is, if the problem is not completely solved by Blitzkrieg, it will take a little longer, and then logistics will follow.
In the end, the essence of all protracted wars is the outcome of logistics.
For example, the war to resist US aggression and aid Korea, which we are familiar with, began with the first battle between China and the US military in October 1950 and ended with the fifth battle in June 1951. This stage is a common war, and the specific manifestation is to fight for territory. For example, the volunteers pushed the front from the Yalu River to the 38th parallel, which took eight months. But the war to resist US aggression and aid Korea lasted 33 months. What are the remaining 25 months? The answer is: logistics.
As I have said many times before, in the 25 months since the end of the fifth campaign, there have been no major battles between China and the United States on the battlefield to resist US aggression and aid Korea, and the front has been stable near the 38th parallel at the end of the fifth campaign until the signing of the armistice agreement.
In the next 25 months, China and the United States fought for logistics while negotiating. The United States no longer launched a major attack on the volunteer army, nor did the Volunteer Army take the initiative to launch a major attack on the United States. Both China and the United States fought for logistics. Specifically, the US military is carrying out a strangulation war on the volunteer army’s long logistics supply line. The method is also very simple, that is, constantly bombing the transportation lines of the volunteer army with aircraft, and the volunteer army launched an anti strangulation war, and established a logistics headquarters of the volunteer army with Hong Xuezhi, deputy commander of the volunteer army, as its commander.
We can infer that if the volunteer army can completely defeat the strangulation war carried out by the US military on the volunteer army’s logistics supply line, and if the volunteer army’s logistics can rest assured, the volunteer army can completely continue to push the front south, and even drive the US army out of the sea. However, the volunteer army’s anti strangulation war was only a draw with the US Army on the whole, so the volunteer army could not continue to push the front south from the 38th parallel. On the contrary, the US military’s hanging war against the volunteers did not achieve complete success. It only drew with the volunteers, so the US military could not advance the front north from the 38th parallel.
Let’s talk again about the war of resistance against Japan.
How did Japan fail in the war of resistance against Japan? The most direct reason is that the US military has joined the war. However, the US military only entered the war in 1941. China’s war of resistance against Japanese aggression began in 1931, broke out in 1937, and entered a strategic stalemate in 1941. The US military never participated in the war. Why did the US military participate in 1941? Because Japan attacked the American Pearl Harbor.
Why did the Japanese army attack the US Pearl Harbor? In the strategic stalemate, why did the Japanese army offend the United States? Add a powerful enemy for yourself?
The reason is that the Japanese army can’t support the huge war demand in logistics, especially oil.
Therefore, Japan needs oil from the Pacific region, and most of this oil is controlled by the United States, Britain and other countries.
Therefore, Japan has no choice but to go to war with the United States.
I have said many times before that the core of defeating the Japanese aggressors is China, not the United States. Why? It is because China has dragged the Japanese army on the battlefield, causing serious problems in the logistics of the Japanese army, and finally forcing Japan to have no choice but to fight against the US Army and burn itself.
Therefore, the analysis of the root cause is because the Chinese Army insisted, carried and dragged on the battlefield, and finally dragged Japan down. The objective reason behind this is that, as described in Chairman Mao’s article on protracted war written in 1938, Japan is a small country and China is a big country. Therefore, although we can’t kill him for a while, we will not surrender to the death. Finally, we drag Japan to death and force it to take a road of no return.
According to the dialectical principle of Marxist philosophy on internal and external causes, the internal cause of anything is fundamental.
OK, let’s not go further. Let’s talk about the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
If Russia can not quickly and thoroughly solve the war in Ukraine, it is afraid that it will have to fight a logistics war with the United States and the west next.
Most directly, Russia’s big move since August has been to bomb several ammunition depots in Ukraine. However, this is not the main battlefield of logistics warfare in the Russian Ukrainian conflict. Because Ukraine’s ammunition support, political support, spiritual support and public opinion support all come from the United States and about 40 countries in the West.
Therefore, Russia’s focus is on attacking the United States and about 40 western countries that support Ukraine.
So where did Russia start? The key words are: natural gas.
Naturally, Russia does not start from the perspective of natural gas alone, but natural gas is the most important and typical representative. Today, we will only talk about natural gas.
The forces supporting Ukraine are mainly the United States and Europe. It is difficult for Russia to chew the hard bone of the United States, and in terms of natural gas, the United States is the largest natural gas producer in the world. Therefore, Russia has targeted Europe, whose typical representative is the EU.
Russia’s logic is that if the EU can be completely defeated and the EU can no longer support Ukraine, it will be difficult for the United States and even Britain and Japan to independently support the war in Ukraine.
Russia has a unique advantage in attacking the EU with natural gas.
According to the world energy statistical yearbook 2022, the consumption of natural gas in Europe in 2021 was 571.1 billion cubic meters, including 210.4 billion cubic meters produced by itself and 341 billion cubic meters imported.
In the imported natural gas. 184.4 billion cubic meters come from Russia, of which 167 billion cubic meters are imported from Russia through pipelines and 17.4 billion cubic meters are imported from Russia by ship.
In total, among the natural gas imported from Europe in 2021, the import from Russia accounted for 54%, and the natural gas imported from Russia accounted for 32% of the total natural gas consumption, that is, about 1 / 3.
I am particularly entangled with specific figures today, because only by looking at specific figures can we see the final direction of this game more clearly. If you just say it in a large scale, it may give people a vague feeling.
Natural gas has a wide range of uses, the most direct of which is heating in winter. In fact, natural gas is still needed in summer, because Europe has a large amount of natural gas for power generation, accounting for about 15% of its total power generation in 2021. In summer, air conditioning is used in hot weather, so there is a great demand for electricity. This summer, many cities in China have imposed power rationing, and the core reason is also that there is insufficient electricity. The same is true in Europe. So for the people’s life, natural gas should be used all year round. As for the use of natural gas for cooking at home, of course, but the amount is not large.
Natural gas is not only used for the daily life of the people, but also for industrial production. First of all, electricity. In particular, some enterprises with high power consumption will basically close down if there is no power. For example, a glass manufacturer in Austria, the oldest glass manufacturer in the world, is now closed. Why? Because it is made of glass, it needs to keep the glass furnace powered on 24 hours a day. However, the lack of natural gas in Europe affects the power supply, so it can’t guarantee sufficient power supply 24 hours a day. Another example is that two of the largest metal smelters in the EU have also closed down, because the electricity price has risen too much and the cost is too high to sustain. The electricity price in Europe is about 10 times that of last year.
The application of natural gas is also reflected in the fact that it is a raw material. For example, natural gas is a raw material for the production of chemical fertilizers. Since the beginning of this year, due to the shortage of natural gas, the production of fertilizer in Europe with natural gas as the main raw material has basically stagnated, resulting in a 9% gap in the world’s fertilizer supply.
In short, natural gas is very important, and about 1 / 3 of the EU’s natural gas depends on Russia. Russia’s continuous reduction in the supply of natural gas to the EU this year has made the EU under great pressure.
In this case, on September 2, Russia announced that the turbine in the Beixi No. 1 pipeline, which originally supplied natural gas to the European Union, had problems and might cause a fire, so Beixi No. 1 was completely shut down and no natural gas was supplied at all.
Beixi-1 supplies more than 59 billion cubic meters of natural gas to Europe every year, accounting for about 1 / 3 of the natural gas supplied to Europe. The zero supply of natural gas through this pipeline reminds people whether Russia can completely zero the supply of natural gas to Europe.
If it is completely zero, can Europe bear it? Can the EU resist? At the same time, there is another question: can Russia carry it?
From the perspective of Russia, Russia earned $55.5 billion in 2021 by exporting natural gas. Russia will export about 240 billion cubic meters of natural gas in 2021, of which about 180 billion will be sold to Europe, accounting for 3 / 4. What is this concept? Russia’s military spending in 2021 is only $65.9 billion. Generally speaking, we believe that Russia’s military spending is supported by natural gas. Among them, 3 / 4 is contributed by Europe, about 40 billion US dollars, which is close to 2 / 3 of Russia’s military expenditure in 2021. That is to say, if Russia completely stops supplying natural gas to the EU, then 2 / 3 of Russia’s military spending will disappear.
Therefore, this is a huge pressure on Russia.
Therefore, if Russia wants to play the logistics card against the United States and Europe and shut down Europe’s natural gas, it must first see how much it can bear. Therefore, as I have said many times before, fighting a war is a comprehensive strength. It is easy to do things with money and fight a war. It is difficult without money.
Some people may say that if Russia reduces the amount of natural gas supplied to Europe to zero, it can sell more to its friends, such as more to China and more to India, which can make up for some losses?
This statement needs to be said from two angles.
From the first perspective, suppose that China buys more natural gas from Russia, but the total amount of natural gas China needs is certain. If China buys more from Russia, it will naturally buy less from other places. For example, China imported the most natural gas from Australia in 2021, followed by the United States. If China imported more from Russia in 2022, it would naturally import less from Australia and the United States. Then Australia and the United States could sell the natural gas originally sold to China to the European Union.
So in terms of quantity, Russia sells more to its friendly countries and less to the EU. After a big circle, the EU can still earn this amount. Of course, we won’t talk about the price for the time being, but only about the quantity.
Second, if China or India buys more natural gas than they need from Russia, they can naturally resell it to Europe. According to Türkiye’s new dawn, Sinopec alone sold at least 45 batches of liquefied natural gas to Europe this year, accounting for 6% of Europe’s total imports in the first half of this year. Therefore, Russia sells more to its friends and less to the EU, which does not have a good effect in terms of quantity. It can only play a role in terms of price. Because, like Sinopec, it buys natural gas from Russia and sells it to the European Union, Sinopec will definitely increase the price to make some money. It joked on the Internet that “China has made tens of billions of dollars in tears, and Europe still needs to thank us”.
So fundamentally speaking, if Russia wants to get stuck in the EU in terms of quantity (not price) on the natural gas issue, the most fundamental way is to sell less on the whole.
In short, fundamentally speaking, Russia must bleed itself. If you want to tear down the eastern wall of the European Union and then repair your western wall from your friends, it is not feasible in terms of quantity, but it is effective in terms of price.
However, in terms of price, in fact, Russia has to bleed its own blood before the whole world can absorb the blood of the European Union, because it does not sell natural gas to the European Union. If it sells more natural gas to countries such as China, India and Türkiye, the price must be cheap, so it still suffers. In the final analysis, it is still how much blood you put yourself that you can absorb the blood of others.
In short, there is no unprofitable business.
In the final analysis, if you want to fight others, you must make sacrifices. The last thing you fight is who can bear the loss. Therefore, I always say that fighting is a comprehensive national strength. Therefore, I have said many times before that fighting is who can bear it.
This is an important issue that we should pay attention to when analyzing Russia’s natural gas war against the EU. I mean, friends, don’t simply think that Russia wants to fight a natural gas war, which can be fought at any time, and it is very capricious to what extent. It’s not so capricious, it’s not so simple.
Moreover, this kind of willlessness is not simple, and there is another problem.
Returning to the question just mentioned, some people think that Russia has stopped selling natural gas to the EU and then sold more natural gas to its friends. Even if its friends resell it to the EU, the EU has to pay more, which is a blow to the EU. If you are willing to suffer losses, can you play like this willfully? It seems impossible.
The reason is that even if Russia wants to sell more gas, his friends also want to buy more. Whether he wants to buy it for his own use after buying it or sell it for a profit after buying it, it is still limited by objective conditions. This restriction is transportation. The reason is also very simple. If you want to sell something to me, how can you give it to me? Without the express brother, without logistics, without the express cabinet, it would be very difficult for you to give things to me.
The same goes for selling natural gas. Natural gas is sold by two modes of transportation, either pipeline or ship.
Let’s talk about the pipeline first. The pipeline is repaired in advance. The annual transportation capacity is so large, and the temporary pipeline repair is not so fast. Take China for example. The main pipeline for China to import natural gas from Russia is the Siberian power 1 pipeline, with an annual gas supply capacity of only 5 billion cubic meters. You can imagine how much a pipeline with an annual gas supply capacity of only 5 billion cubic meters can grow even if it is operated at full capacity? For example, an increase of 20% means an increase of 1 billion cubic meters. What is the figure of 1 billion cubic meters? As mentioned above, Russia will sell 180 billion natural gas to Europe in 2021. One billion is a drop in the bucket in front of 180 billion.
After the pipeline was finished, we talked about the transportation of natural gas by ship. There is no doubt that in the past many years, the number of ships transporting natural gas in the world was certain, which matched the demand in the past many years. Suddenly, Russia sold it to China. India and other countries need to increase the number of natural gas carriers. Where can we find so many carriers?
After the outbreak of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the chartering fees of ships transporting natural gas increased significantly. This price fluctuation deeply reflects the shortage of ships. On August 23, the report of spark commodiitis, which monitors the rent of ships, showed that the daily rent of liquefied gas carriers from mid September to November rose to $105250, while the rent in August was $64000, and that one year ago was $47000. The rent in the next two months was 64% higher than that in August and 124% higher than that one year ago. Stephen Gordon, Clarkson director of London shipping company, said that in the first 20 days of August, customers paid $24.1 billion for new LNG ship orders, which exceeded the order volume of the whole year of 2021 in less than a month.
From these price fluctuations, we can see that ships are very tight and can’t be found. So even if Russia wants to sell more natural gas to countries like China, China also wants to buy it, but it can’t find enough ships to transport it.
Therefore, in general logic, Russia’s most likely choice is to cut off its gas to Europe, especially the EU, but try to sell more gas to its friends. But the number of people who can sell more gas to their friends is limited.
Let’s assume that Russia reduces its gas supply to the EU to zero and sells more gas to its friends as much as possible. How much more can you sell your friends? This figure is not easy to predict. I’ll just say it by patting my head.
Zero the gas to Europe, that is, reduce the gas by 180 billion cubic meters. I assume that 1 / 3 of the reduced quantity can be sold to their friends, that is, to sell more to their friends on a normal basis, that is, 60 billion cubic meters.
In this way, Russia actually sold 120 billion less gas. I think this may be the largest amount that Russia can operate. Please note that it is the largest amount. This is a logical analysis. In fact, I think it is impossible.
This is a test for Russia. As mentioned earlier, a reduction of 180 billion cubic meters is equivalent to the loss of two-thirds of Russia’s military spending in one year. If we oversold 60 billion cubic meters to our friends, and make up for it, we will lose about half of the military expenditure in a year. This test is not small.
If so, let’s see if the EU can withstand this situation.
According to this statement, the EU suddenly lost 180 billion cubic meters of gas from Russia. However, Russia will sell 60 billion cubic meters more gas to its friends, and the extra 60 billion cubic meters will flow back to the EU through a series of complex circles to fill the holes in the EU.
This logic is like this. Let’s repeat it by analogy. For example, if China buys 10 billion more gas from Russia, China will buy 5 billion less gas from Australia, so Australia can sell the 5 billion gas originally sold to China to Europe. Another 5 billion yuan that China bought may be sold to Europe. Therefore, the part of natural gas that Russia sold more to its friends went to Europe after a round trip.
This is the first way for Europe to fill the hole, with an amount of 60 billion cubic meters.
Let’s look at the second way that Europe can fill the hole: that is, those countries that sell gas increase production.
However, there is a problem in this. In a short time, we can only increase production under the existing infrastructure. In the long run, we should add new gas wells, new ships, new gas tanks and new pipelines. Today, we only talk about the short term, such as one year.
According to the data of the international LNG importer group (giignl), the United States exported 27 million tons (37.26 billion cubic meters) of natural gas to Europe in the first half of this year, exceeding the 21 million tons (29 billion cubic meters) in 2021. In a simple calculation, we divide the figure of the United States last year by two to take the figure of the first half of last year. That is to say, the United States exported 37.2 billion cubic meters to Europe in the first half of this year, and 14.5 billion cubic meters to Europe in the first half of last year. This year is roughly double that of last year, and there is a big turn. In the first half of this year, it exported about 20 billion cubic meters more.
By the way, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has indeed made great profits for the US natural gas industry. The export volume has doubled and turned a big corner. The highest price is ten times that of last year, and the average price is at least more than twice that of last year. It has been a long-standing practice of the United States to allow other places to fight and make big profits by themselves. This is one of the reasons why the United States inflamed the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
The United States can fill the great pit of Europe, but who else can fill the pit for Europe? This is a little unclear, including the aforementioned Sinopec resale of Russian oil to Europe, as well as the highly publicized online incident some time ago, Sinopec resale of gas purchased from the United States to Europe. These situations are very common, and it is difficult to count the specific figures, but we can look at the total.
In the first half of this year, Europe imported 85 billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas, compared with 54.7 billion cubic meters last year, an increase of 30.3 billion cubic meters. As mentioned earlier, the United States contributed 20 billion cubic meters of the 30 billion cubic meters. The remaining 10 billion yuan may be an additional increase like that of the United States, or it may be gas bought from Russia and the United States and reselled to Europe like China. We roughly estimate that the two situations will account for half of the total. Well, I reckon that in the first half of the year, leaving aside the share of countries like China that are vacated because they buy more gas from Russia, the remaining 25 billion is new supply. For example, the situation of Sinopec in China should be included in the first way mentioned just now, and we will not repeat the calculation.
Half a year is 25 billion, and a year is 50 billion. This is the second way for the EU to fill the hole, with an amount of 50 billion cubic meters.
This is the figure when the relevant countries do not save extra energy. Now, the third way of the EU is to save extra energy in some countries.
On July 18, EU president von der Leyen visited Azerbaijan and signed a natural gas purchase and sales agreement with Azerbaijan, adding 8 billion cubic meters of natural gas exported from Azerbaijan to the EU through Türkiye pipeline last year. To 12.1 billion cubic meters, an increase of about 4 billion cubic meters. In addition, it is reported that Norway, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and other countries in Europe plan to increase the natural gas production in the North Sea by 10 billion cubic meters. Algeria will increase the supply of 4 billion cubic meters of pipeline gas to Italy this year. Egypt also agreed to supply 3 billion cubic meters of pipeline gas to Italy. These items add up to about 20 billion cubic meters.
This is the third way for the EU to fill the hole, and the amount is 20 billion cubic meters.
What else can we do?
The answer is: make an article on the phone.
As mentioned above, natural gas can be used to generate electricity. Now there is not enough natural gas, so we should use less natural gas to generate electricity. What we lack is electricity generated by other things, such as coal, wind, light and nuclear power stations. Then, what is the potential of the EU in this respect?
Let’s talk about the media first. In 2021, Europe’s coal-fired power generation will reach 579 billion kwh, an increase of 18% over 2020. Let’s assume that in the next year, he will add a little more on this basis. How much will he increase? Let’s calculate the figure higher. For example, an increase of 20% means an increase of 120 billion kwh. If more coal is used to generate 120 billion kwh of electricity, part of natural gas can be saved. How much can be saved? If 5 kwh of electricity is generated per cubic meter of natural gas, 24 billion cubic meters can be saved.
Of course, increasing the use of coal for power generation will cause more environmental pollution.
By the way, Germany has announced to cancel the goal of carbon neutrality by 2035. It seems that the government really intends to use coal to generate electricity again, and the environmental problem has been ignored.
I want to say by the way, don’t believe what Westerners say. Think about the past decade or so when they forced China to reduce carbon emissions unrealistically and imposed the label of global polluter on China. Now they say that the goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2035 is cancelled.
Not only that, but the United States, which is not short of gas, has also obviously regressed. On June 30 this year, the US Federal Supreme Court made a ruling, making it clear that the US National Environmental Protection Agency has no right to limit greenhouse gas emissions at the state level, nor can it require power plants to give up fossil fuels and switch to renewable energy. In short, the US central government cannot ask state governments to control carbon emissions.
No wonder academician Ding Zhongli said in an interview last year that to reduce carbon emissions, the west is just talking. On August 20, 2021, when academician Ding Zhongli accepted CCTV’s “Lu Jian interview”, he said in the original words: “I’ll give you a prediction. These western countries are empty cannon. Do you think they will really reduce emissions? Let’s see.”
To tell the truth, at that time, I was thinking, even if academician Ding was right, we’ll see. It will take several years before we can see their nature? Unexpectedly, after watching for only one year, academician Ding was right.
Therefore, whenever the United States and the west come up with some lofty slogans to deceive China, we must look at the essence through the phenomenon and the sinister intentions behind them. The West’s forcing China to make unrealistic goals of carbon neutrality is essentially to curb China’s development speed. The reason is very simple. About 70% of China’s electricity is generated by burning coal. If coal is not allowed to be burned at once, there will be no electricity. Where does the factory use electricity? Where does the electricity for people’s daily life come from, such as turning on the air conditioner in summer? Can ordinary people live a good life?
Let’s not go further. Anyway, Europe plans to use more coal to generate electricity and pollute the environment to fill the natural gas hole caused by the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. This can save 24 billion cubic meters of natural gas.
This is the fourth way for the EU to fill the hole, with an amount of 24 billion cubic meters.
On the issue of power generation, in addition to ignoring environmental pollution and using more coal for power generation, they also have a trick, that is, to use wind, light, nuclear and other pollution-free power generation methods to generate more power, so as to reduce the consumption of natural gas.
In the first half of this year, Germany generated 127.6 billion kwh of electricity from renewable energy sources such as wind and light, up 12% year-on-year. I assume that the whole EU, like Germany, will save some energy in the coming year to generate electricity from renewable energy sources such as wind and light, which will increase by 10% over the past. How much more electricity can be generated and how much natural gas can be saved?
The total power generation of the European Union in 2021 is 3.3 trillion kwh, of which the power generation of renewable energy is 1.3 trillion kwh, an increase of 10% means an increase of 130 billion kwh. If one cubic meter of natural gas generates 5 kwh of electricity, another 26 billion cubic meters of natural gas can be saved.
This is the fifth way for the EU to fill the hole, with an amount of 26 billion cubic meters.
Let’s round up the amounts of these five ways.
The first way is for Russia to sell more gas to its friends, who either sell more gas to Europe or buy less gas from old customers, who can sell this part of the gas originally bought for Russian friends to the EU. The amount of this route is 60 billion cubic meters.
The second way is for relevant countries, mainly the United States, to tap the potential to increase the supply by 50 billion cubic meters on the basis of the existing supply.
In the third way, some countries will increase their production capacity by an additional 20 billion cubic meters.
The fourth way is to use more coal to generate electricity. Although it pollutes the environment more and denies the promise of carbon neutrality, it can save a part of natural gas, with an amount of 24 billion cubic meters.
The fifth way is to use more renewable energy such as wind and light to generate more electricity, so as to reduce the use of natural gas for power generation, and save a part of natural gas, which is 26 billion cubic meters.
Taken together, these five roads have reached 180 billion cubic meters. As I said earlier, the total hole in Europe is 180 billion cubic meters.
In short, the hole seems to have been filled.
And there is another way to fill the hole, which I haven’t said yet, that is, to generate more nuclear power. In 2021, the EU’s nuclear power generation capacity will be 730 billion kwh. If it increases by 10% in the next year, that is to say, it will increase by 73 billion kwh. According to the calculation of generating 5 kwh of electricity from one cubic meter of natural gas, it will save about 14 billion cubic meters of natural gas.
After this calculation, we come to a conclusion that even if Russia completely cuts off the supply of natural gas to the EU, the EU is not dead end.
If Russia completely cuts off the supply of natural gas to the EU, will the EU surely survive?
The answer is: not necessarily.
Not necessarily. It’s a very rational and objective answer. If I add my subjective judgment, I want to say: he can’t live.
I spent so much space, said so much, enumerated so many figures, and talked so much logic just to say that the EU has the conditions to live, but now I say subjectively that it can’t live. What’s the problem?
The problem lies in three words: execution.
Yes, execution. All the things I mentioned above are just a possibility. If we want to turn the possibility into reality, we need execution.
It’s like when we walk into the kitchen, we have pots and pans, carrots, cabbage, pork and beef, seafood and crabs, oil, salt, soy sauce and vinegar… But can a person walk into the kitchen and make a big table?
Why can some people cook a table while others can’t? The reason lies in execution. You only have the objective conditions to do things, but do not have the executive power to do things. Everything is empty.
Take the prevention and control of the epidemic as an example, why are almost all countries in the world lying flat? Don’t the objective conditions for wearing masks exist? Don’t we have the conditions for full staff nucleic acid testing? Today, with the outbreak of an epidemic as big as COVID-19, the prevention and control model of human society is still very primitive, that is, the Chinese model, that is, the isolation between people. This method is very primitive and simple. The objective conditions are available, but it depends on whether you have the ability to carry out.
The reality is that almost all countries in the world, except China, lack such executive power, so they all lie flat. They call it “living with the virus”.
Bushfires break out every year in the United States. Max Moritz, a bushfire expert at the University of California, said: “we will have to coexist with bushfires and change the existing living and lifestyle.”
It’s really a long experience. It’s OK to coexist with viruses and wildfires. If you think about it carefully, their logic is that if you can’t win anything, you can coexist.
This reminds us that one day in the future, when they find that they can’t decide China, their experts will definitely say, “coexist with China”.
It is hoped that they will maintain the fine tradition of always coexisting with each other.
At present, China’s anti epidemic execution has also encountered challenges, because the latest novel coronavirus virus is too infectious. It is also China’s method. In the first round of the epidemic in 2020, we easily solved it, and we solved it in three months. But now, the epidemic situation in the whole country is rising one after another and can not be stopped. This requires China to raise its executive power to a new level.
It can be said that if novel coronavirus with a transmission coefficient of about 10 can be controlled, China will not be afraid of infectious diseases of any level in the future. This is a big test that China is currently facing in the prevention and control of infectious diseases, and it is also a big test that China’s economy is currently facing. China’s GDP growth rate in the first half of the year ranks about 8th and 9th among the major countries in the world. The main reason is that we are still isolating people in many places. Although we have saved the lives and health of our people, the number of deaths caused by covid-19 per million people in the world is 818, 3087 in the United States and 4 in China. However, since the beginning of this year, other countries have been lying flat. The dead are the dead. Anyway, the economy is operating normally. We are still fighting, so we have lost GDP growth.
But our pursuit is not limited to this. We definitely want both people’s lives and health and GDP growth. Therefore, the current epidemic prevention and control urgently needs us to improve our current execution.
The core of the dilemma faced by the EU in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine lies in its implementation. Looking at how weak their execution in COVID-19 and many other aspects is, I think that if Russia completely cuts off the supply of natural gas to the EU, the EU has the conditions to solve the problem, but they have no execution, so they can’t decide.
This is the conclusion of my content today.
My conclusion also answers a question, that is, in China’s public opinion field, many people think that the EU will not survive this winter, and the reason seems obvious. However, this simple way of thinking can not answer the question: if the EU can definitely not withstand this winter, why should it fight Russia to the end?
My answer is: because he objectively has the possibility to carry it, he has the confidence to carry it to the end with Russia; However, because he has no ability to turn this possibility into reality, he is also guilty.
I think it’s perfect to say so.
I wrote the manuscript here and turned on the computer again to see if there was any latest news related to my content today. The latest news I saw was that Russian President Putin had a telephone conversation with French President macron at his request on the 11th. The theme of the discussion between the two sides was naturally the situation in Ukraine. From the press release, we focused on the safety and security of the zaporoje nuclear power plant and the global food security.
On the surface, it seems that they did not directly talk about how to end the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, but only about the safety of nuclear power plants and food security. However, macron spoke to Putin on the phone again. This is an important signal. Political figures are sometimes more shy than young people when they are in love. We can’t rule out that this is a signal that Europe wants to find a solution to the Ukrainian problem with Russia.
What is the background behind this signal?
On September 3, 70000 people demonstrated on the streets of Prague, the Czech capital, demanding an end to sanctions against Russia. Some people directly held up slogans of “anti EU” and “anti NATO”.
On September 3, a small-scale protest party appeared in the streets of Paris, France, and the people held up the slogan of “quitting NATO”.
On September 4, thousands of people held a demonstration in Cologne, Germany, to protest against Germany’s military support to Ukraine and accuse Russia of imposing sanctions, which affected the lives of the German people.
On September 5, protests also took place in Berlin, the capital of Germany. The people demanded that the government lift the sanctions against Russia and improve the people’s lives.
On September 10, thousands of people took to the streets in Vienna, Austria, to protest against soaring prices and call for the lifting of suicide sanctions against Russia.
These demonstrations will probably remind European politicians to think carefully. If you play the card well, you can win the card. But do you have the ability to play the card well?
Look at the habit of European politicians lying flat all the time. We Chinese we media, without exploring what is possible and what is impossible behind it, make a muddled conclusion and simply and rudely believe that they can’t make it. I think it’s OK.
Finally:
The problem of natural gas holes in Europe will be easier to solve in the future, because with the passage of time, more and more gas wells have been built, more and more lucky ships have been built, more and more oil storage facilities have been built, and more and more gas transmission pipelines have been laid… No matter how the executive power of Europeans is stretched, only when there is time can it always be done.
Therefore, this winter must be their worst. If they can get through this winter, it will be easier in the future.
Therefore, this winter is indeed a window of time for resolving the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The more we delay, the more unfavorable it will be to Russia.