|
|
As we have reported, the sanctions imposed by NATO and the United States on Russia have not punished Putin as U.S. President Joe Biden predicted, instead they have ravaged businesses and individuals. Indeed, thanks to the sanctions, in Germany, which once received some 55 percent of its natural gas from Russia, its energy prices spiked 43 percent year-to-date… 41.9 percent for the rest of the euro-currency nations. Overall, inflation hit 10.7 percent according to EU statistics.
The Trends Journal has noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin is banking on a long, cold winter in Europe for public support for Ukraine to wane.
“This is merely the silence before the storm,” Manfred Güllner, a pollster, told the Financial Times. “The discontent is great, and people do not have any sense that the government has a plausible strategy to master the crisis.” (See “FRANCE CONTINUES TO FACE LARGE-SCALE PROTESTS OVER COST OF LIVING,” “PROTESTS BREAK OUT IN GERMANY OVER ENERGY PRICES, WAR” and “MASSIVE PROTESTS BREAK OUT IN PARIS OVER SOARING PRICES.”)
Videos emerged online last week that showed tens of thousands taking to the streets in Prague and Germany. These protesters blame sanctions against Russia as a significant contributor to their financial pain.
Presstitutes in the Western media have barely reported on the escalating. Mark Cancian, a former Marine colonel and senior adviser to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told The Trends Journal earlier this month that Russian President Vladimir Putin sees these protests as one step to force Ukraine to the negotiating table.
TRENDPOST: The Trends Journal has said countries across Europe will face an emboldened populist movement because people are tired of being pawns for politicians to enrich themselves and their global cronies at the expense of dignity and freedom among their people.
FRANCE: Thousands of people protested in France on Thursday and called for increases in pay to make up for surging prices. The Wall Street Journal reported that these protests impacted traffic and disrupted public transportation.
Video emerged of protesters waving the French flag chanting, “Let’s get out of NATO!”
Police dressed in black riot gear could be seen beating protesters back with batons.
The energy crisis has strained the relationship between Paris, Berlin, and the U.S.
Emanual Macron, the French president, last week called out the “double standards” after it was revealed that the U.S. sold Europe gas at up to four times the price of domestic prices.
“I intend to raise this issue during my visit to the United States in December,” Macron said.
Macron’s relationship with Olaf Scholtz, the German prime minister, is also on the rocks over energy and the two never cozied up after energy disagreements. France reportedly criticized Berlin for taking a “go-it-alone” approach on gas prices. The two have also historically differed on nuclear power. France generally embraces that form of energy.
Macron also admitted that some of the demand for an increase in wages was legitimate, according to the FT.
PRAGUE: Thousands of protesters took to the streets on Friday to lash out at soaring energy prices and inflation that hit 18 percent in September. These protesters say their government has been short sighted in its support of Ukraine at the expense of its citizens.
“Russia’s not our enemy, the government of warmongers is the enemy,” one protester said, according to DW.com.
The report noted that Prague has been a major support of the Ukrainian war effort and has taken in 450,000 Ukrainian refugees. (See “MASSIVE PROTESTS IN PRAGUE: THE WORST IS YET TO COME.”)
GERMANY: Thousands protested across Germany to voice opposition to sanctions against Russia.
The mainstream media does not generally cover these events, because these outlets want to sell a united front against Russia, but social media posts showed Germans taking to the streets in Leipzig and Dresden.
One Twitter user posted a video of Germans waving the flag and posted, “Massive Protest Today!!! End Sanctions on Russia! They want Russian Fuel and Neutrality! No Starving or Freezing for Zelensky and Ursula von der Leyen…Not Reported on Mainstream Media.”
Germany has experienced weekly protests since the end of the summer, according to the Financial Times. Berlin has announced $266 billion in government support for households to help its citizens deal with the rising costs.
Despite the protests, European leaders continue to keep up the fight against Russia and public support for sanctions remains high.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s ceremonial head of state, said Friday that there can be no peace with Russia as long as troops remain in Ukraine.
“Russia’s brutal war of aggression in Ukraine has reduced the European security order to ashes,” he said during a national address, according to the Financial Times. He said, “In the face of evil, goodwill is not enough.”
The paper noted that Steinmeier had once advocated for compromise with Russia—like after its annexation of Crimea. But he said, “When we look at today’s Russia, there is no place for old dreams.”
He said there can be no peace that “rewards” Putin’s land grabs.
Vit Rakusan, Prague’s interior minister, tweeted in response to the protests: “We know who’s our friend and who’s bleeding for our freedom. And we also know who’s our enemy.”
TRENDPOST: We have long noted that anyone who protests sanctions against Russia are immediately written off in the media as a “Putin sympathizer.” The DW report noted that the organizers in Prague called the protest “Czech Republic First,” which was a play on Donald Trump’s “America First.”
The report identified the protesters as “a mixture of various, mostly far-right, fringe groups with pro-Kremlin and anti-vaccine tendencies.”
Despite the support for sanctions, just nine percent of Germans believe Scholz has a “coherent strategy” in place to handle the energy crisis. But Georg Maier, the interior minister of Thuringia, an eastern German state, told the FT that “far-right” groups are “trying to recruit people at the rallies, and this is what worries me.”