The European Union will sacrifice a lot from other people as long as it can strengthen its hold on Europe.
Eastern EU members aren't happy with this:
German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday defended the idea of holding a European Union meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, arguing that it would offer an opportunity to confront Putin with European concerns.
Merkel's justification is absurd. The EU isn't going to confront Putin on anything at all.
And the idea that a weak Germany is going to defend Europeans is bouncing the absurdity rubble. Germany refuses to arm up in the face of Russian aggression and hostility.
And Germany enabled Russia's ability to freeze Ukrainians and eastern NATO countries in the winter by approving the nearly completed Baltic Sea pipeline from Russia to Germany which bypasses existing lines through eastern European countries. Let the natural gas games begin!
Sergiy Makogon, chief executive of Gas Transmission System Operator of Ukraine, said he believed Russia’s Gazprom was purposefully holding back gas supplies from Europe by refusing to ship additional volumes via Ukraine, in a bid to force the approval of the contentious Nord Stream 2 pipeline that runs from the Baltic to Germany.
The entire point of EU-Russia talks is to make it seem as if the European Union itself is a sovereign entity to negotiate for all of the for-now sovereign states that belong to the EU.
Such diplomacy only cares about the process that elevates the EU and not the actual topics under discussion.
By such measures the proto-imperial EU begins to erase the prefix and eliminate American influence through NATO by weakening NATO. Neither America nor Europeans should want that:
The modern purpose of NATO is to keep America in Europe, keep Russia out, and keep European autocratic impulses down. The third reason is a real threat that is easy to forget in the post-World War II time frame that we remember as the normal state of European affairs.
The EU is not a democracy. And its drive to rule Europe will crush democracy in its member states.
Don't let it pretend it is the sovereign of Europe. No good can come from that.
UPDATE: I noticed this article a minute after this published. Am I right about the EU or am I right?
The arrest of Raman Pratasevich changed the calculus for EU capitals, which agreed new sanctions with real bite. The EU could finally be succeeding in its search for strategic sovereignty.[emphasis added]
The EU isn't trying to save Pratasevich. Or even prevent Belarus from sliding into Anschluss with Russia. I mean, could the sanctions do either? Probably not. Just broken eggs for the lovely EU omelet.
But the EU apparatchiki don't care. The EU sanctions could finally provide the EU with strategic autonomy to replace those various European capitals as the source of European diplomacy.
