When the war in ukraine, the countries allied to President Volodímir Zelenski began an economic blockade once morest Russia. Vladimir Putin’s nation was expected to desist from the armed conflict; however, the Russian president has already taken a fifth of Ukraine and continues to advance.
The consequences of this advance are not only territorial, but also economic. This war has affected Western Europe by a chain of events: increase in the price of fuel, transport and the shopping basket; and therefore an impact in inflation and economic destabilization.
This Friday, July 8, in a televised speech, the Russian president warned that “the additional use of (economic) sanctions might have even more serious consequences, even, without exaggeration, catastrophic consequences in the world energy market”, according to the Financial Times .
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What Putin mentioned is not very unreasonable, it can already be seen how the value of the euro has not only weakened compared to the ruble, but has also fallen to almost the same price as the dollar, which means that the countries of the eurozone are paying more for each barrel of oil, a raw material that is bought in dollars.
The rise in fuel prices in the Old Continent is causing serious protest movements in parts of Europe: in the Netherlands, farmers and fishermen have blocked several stalls to protest high fuel prices.
In Britain, annual inflation has risen to 9.1% and public workers have been asking for higher wages since June. In Norway, something similar happens, the employees of the oil industry have asked to increase more than 4.5% of their salaries, since year-on-year inflation has also risen to 5.7%.
Likewise, in Spain, between January and March there have been 179 strikes. Although fuel costs have been rising since 2021, the invasion of Ukraine has increased this bad scenario, for which the Spanish stock market has lost the support of 8,000 points in the first week of July and has left everything earned this year in 2021.
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Although it is believed that this event has united the European Union much more and has added NATO allies, such as Finland and Sweden, the truth is that some European political parties that sympathize with Putin are having more political influence.
In Spain, Vox maintains the intention to vote according to the polls. In France, the ultranationalist Marine Le Pen obtained more than 40% of the votes in the presidential elections in April. Viktor Orbán was re-elected President of Hungary this year with an absolute majority. Even Giorgia Meloni, leader of the ultra-conservative Italian Brothers of Italy party, is emerging as one of the winners in the 2023 elections.
In this way, Putin has managed to prevent the far left and far right parties in Europe from criticizing or indirectly supporting him.
Jorge Dezcallar, former director of the National Intelligence Center of Spain and former KGB spy, said that from the sanctions to the revitalization of NATO they had already been foreseen by Putin, in an article reproduced by the Moroccan media Atalayar.
“He lived through the fall of the Wall and the subsequent disappearance of the Soviet Union in Berlin as a KGB agent, which left him traumatized, and he is determined to regain for Russia the global influence that the USSR once had. As a good nationalist, the first thing he needs is more territory that will give him strategic depth and security, precisely what Ukraine offers him,” he said.
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“Putin calculates that his isolation will have an expiration date, and he will limit himself to gritting his teeth and tightening his belt and waiting for the dust to settle, as happened following (the invasion of) Crimea,” Dezcallar concludes.
