Lava di applicazione Lascia che la flotta dell’ombra russa operi con impunità

A lot of people on reddit pretend they don’t understand basic game theory economics… Especially on [r/europe](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/) and they always come back to something like this… “Russia wanted to squeeze our energy supplies to make us weaker ” etc etc, this is why they destroyed their own energy infrastructure, the Nord stream pipeline etc…

And I always ask something like this: “Why would Russia squeeze our energy supplies if according to you, this energy supply only benefited Russia”

My take on this whole issue is this:

Russian gas was funding both the European and Russian economy but not exclusively the Russian economy only.

It was also funding the economy of the economic block that it’s literally also fighting against at the same time.

Russia by selling gas to Europeans is also funding the European economy while being at a proxy war militarily with Europe and Russia at the same time even while at war they’re also competing against other powers like US or China etc that are also direct economic and geopolitical competitors. So they both want and are insentivized into keeping some kind of economic cooperation going even while at war.

At its peak (2000s–early 2010s):

* Transit fees brought in **2–3% of GDP** yearly.
* In foreign currency terms, it was often **Ukraine’s #1 or #2 “export” service** (on par with steel or agriculture).
* It also gave Ukraine *political leverage*: Europe needed Ukraine stable, Russia needed Ukraine cooperative.

That money was “passive income” for Ukraine — no production, no risk, just geography. In many years, it was one of Ukraine’s biggest hard-currency sources, funding both state budgets and oligarch pockets.

Now, with Nord Stream, TurkStream, LNG, and Russia redirecting flows via **Turkey, China, India**, the toll booth moved. Countries like India benefit by buying cheap Russian energy, refining it, and reselling at a margin. Ukraine lost its privileged “middleman tax,” while others gained the arbitrage power.

Economic cooperation between two powers like Europe and Russia while at the same time fighting one another is an example of a positive sum game, while war is an example of a negative sum game. Both Europe and Russia win from cooperation and both Europe and Russia lose from military aggression.

Both of us also lose in comparison and against other powers like US or China that win when their competitors get weaker from getting stuck in negative sum games like wars or permanently burning bridges of economic cooperations that benefit both sides of the war.

Russia becomes also more and more dependent on one finite resource and their economy long-term is unsustainable and they will eventually stay behind because there’s no innovation. When the demand was high, they’re were just becoming more and more path-dependent, putting all of their eggs into one basket, into producing a low-economic complexity, medium to low value added good, while the high value-added from this raw-material remained into europe, when europe could power their high innovaton, highly productive, high economic complexity and highly industrialized economy. Especially for countries like France, Germany, Italy etc.

In short, I think nobody in Europe benefits economically from anything that’s happening right now. If Russia and Ukraine, or Russia and Europe is stuck in a prisoners-dillemma on weather or not they have to cooperate economically or trade… then Nobody loses from trade. Trading is a positive sum-game for everyone.

If I were in Lloyd’s position, I would also be thinking about it, as the fragmented nature of the legislation and the fact that the sanctions are limited to European and North American borders (and not, as many people on the sub think, to the entire world) leads to Chinese companies creating their own registries and having their own insurers. As a result, Lloyd is losing business and its competitors are growing.