/ world today news/ The project for the South Stream gas pipeline passing through Bulgaria will be completely blocked due to sanctions from the EU and the USA, analysts of the Credit Suisse bank predict.
They tried to predict what could happen if Putin did not limit his military operation only to Crimea. Other sanctions, according to them, could be a ban on the import of Russian goods and a reorientation from Russian gas to other suppliers. The West could also close Moscow’s access to the markets for issuing debt, and servicing the loans granted to the Russian state and companies will become more expensive. The ruble will weaken further and inflation will increase. Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysts have a similar assessment. According to them, military action could cost 3% of Russia’s GDP, with $60 billion lost immediately from stopping gas transit to Europe.
At the same time, the “Wall Street Journal” wrote that the Russian export of energy carriers may turn out to be its Achilles’ heel. Because unlike in 2006 and 2009, when Putin used the gas for blackmail, now exports to Ukraine and Europe have been reduced by 10 and 20%, respectively. All it takes is coordinated import restrictions to turn the gas against Russia. Add to that about $30 billion in vulnerable assets of Russian banks, and Russia could become the weak gazelle at the end of the herd, the target of currency and stock speculation. If the US and its allies introduce “the full range of tools”, Russia could find itself in the situation of 1998, which was the beginning of the end of Yeltsin, writes the Wall Street Journal.
According to the head of the Eastern Committee of the German Economy, Rainer Lidner, 80% of Russian exports are raw materials, and this cannot be used to create a modern economy. Without the high technologies of the West, Russia could not extract its raw materials in a modern way, and extraction becomes extremely expensive. In addition, there was an oversupply of gas and therefore its prices fell on the world market.
In addition, Russia lost its role as the most important trading partner for Germany at the expense of Poland. “For us, the development in China is much more important than that in Russia,” says York Kremer from Komerzbank.
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