Putin’s gas war endgame

What is the Kremlin’s gas war endgame? Based on the various statements from Gazprom, the foreign ministry, and Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, it’d be reasonable to conclude that it is getting western sanctions lifted. The message coming through is that the so-called technical issues that Nord Stream 1 is suffering from would be fixable, if not for the collective west’s ongoing economic embargo of Russia.

If this is what Putin actually wants, it would suggest that sanctions are having a large enough impact on Russia for them to use their major source of leverage. Russia has now substantially reduced its pipeline exports to Europe. Because of pipeline and liquefied natural gas capacity constraints, these are supplies that can’t be sold on anywhere else. Russia can mitigate some revenue loss through higher European gas prices. But that runs out of road if flows are zero, or close to it.

Of course, if the sanctions are damaging the Russian economy and Vladimir Putin thinks that Europe will stop buying Russian gas anyway, there’s a good reason to turn off the taps. There is some recent evidence to suggest that they are hitting Russia harder than the Kremlin is letting on, especially when it comes to Russian military access to western technology. Over time, Russia may be able to adapt. But in the short term, they face a potentially difficult challenge getting the components necessary – in particular semiconductor chips – to make guided munitions.

But it’s also possible that getting the sanctions lifted is not Putin’s ultimate aim. Even if major European gas buyers like Germany or Italy were to push back against the sanctions, which is far from certain, the political path towards any reversal would be extremely difficult. Now that they have been enacted at the EU level, reversing them would similarly require unanimity, as it is a foreign policy decision. It’s hard to see Poland or the Baltic states being willing to go back on the sanctions package now. They’re a fact of life, whether the rest of the EU remains happy with them or not.

This is something the Kremlin is surely aware of, so the point could simply be to cause division within Europe. The lesson they will have learned from both gas-for-roubles and the turbine saga is that this isn’t necessarily difficult. In both cases Germany bent the rules on sanctions in order to try and secure supplies, or at least remove the pretext for the supplies being taken away in the case of the turbine.

The idea would be to lean on European governments and reduce their support for Ukraine’s war effort, in the hope that a ceasefire could bring an end to sanctions and get the gas flowing again. Russia has indicated more openness to the idea of negotiating than before, suggesting that they may increasingly view a take-and-hold ceasefire as their best option. Experience indicates that if this were to happen, it would not be an end to the war, but simply provide an opportunity for Russia to regroup and plan its next move.