Friday, September 4, 2020

Navalny Poisoning and Germany/EU Reactions

There's a layer of landscapes occurring over this and I'll lightly cover the basic facts.

Navalny, for those of you who haven't followed the story....was a Russian blogger who got popular....mostly over the position of anti-corruption.  He's attracted a lot of attention, and in the past month....got poisoned.  The German doctors treating him....say it's the type that would be militarily-produced....neurotoxin Novitschok...so all eyes go toward the Kremlin.

So yesterday, ARD reports this....the NATO folks held an unscheduled meeting.  There's not a lot said in public....just that they met.  It's more of a show thing, than really attempting to accomplish anything.

The EU?  They also held a meeting....same thing....lot of talk but nothing much said.

Sanctions coming?  Well....yeah.  But don't worry, nothing will occur against all the natural gas that Germany buys off Russia.  That will likely continue. 

Lets be kinda honest here....beyond natural gas, there just isn't much that Germany imports in for sales from Russia.  There are some Russian company grocery stores now operating, and there's probably a hundred-odd trucks crossing the border weekly with Russian products being sold.  But if you added up sales....it's not even .1-percent of total groceries sold in Germany, so it's not going to be worth going after.

It's the same story across all of Europe....the mass of what is imported, is from Asia or China. 

This all looks really dramatic and takes up a third of the nightly newscast, but basically....there's not much to admire. 

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