I realize this is not the central issue here, but I keep wondering how the Nobel that was given to Machado plays into this.

It's an excellent and staggering piece. Kudos! Are the details for the side jobs available? I tried hovering over the MEPs squares but nothing opened up....

Full agreement. 🎯

I guess we never fully understand RUS economy, but a major cut to its oil revenue would be very painful at a time when things are bad anyway. On politics, I think DE and its obsession with China exports is key here: have they reached a point to admit the old Chinese market is never coming back?

I dont think our internal set up is Trump's problem.

But even if, Trump is calling for "tariffs", not specifically "sanctions." Tariffs - even punitive - don't require the sanctions route. It's a Council competence through qualified majority vote. EU did this already with Russian agriculture.

I can see why Trump is conditioning US sanctions on EU taking hard decisions. We have indeed been hypocritical, requiring others to do what we ourselves cant agree on. That is simply not acceptable. While Trump is doing this for other reasons, he is 100% right asking us for a clear decision.

3/3

We have been trying to achieve too many things simultaneously. Help Ukraine. Limit RUS revenues. Stop others from helping RUS, but keep buying what we need. Sanction circumvention, but maintain good relationships with China, UAE, Turkey, India. It can't all be done. We need to decide what's #1.

2/3