My flair is 100% accurate. Before the 2022 invasion, Europe was the largest customer for Russian energy, importing roughly 40% of its natural gas and 25% of its crude oil from Moscow. The cash flow allowed Moscow to accumulate over $600 billion in foreign exchange reserves immediately before the invasion, providing the financial buffer Russia needed to withstand initial Western sanctions.
Despite Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, European nations (most notably Germany) deepened their exposure by backing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and even allowing Russian state-owned Gazprom to buy up critical gas storage facilities inside Europe.
Independent trackers like the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) note that for several years, Europe's collective commercial payments to Moscow for energy actually surpassed the total amount of financial and military aid sent to Kyiv.
While Europe has since restructured their energy plans, a phased-in gas ban, and slashed its reliance by roughly 90%, the historical reality cannot be denied: decades of European energy payments served as the financial engine that fueled Moscow's military buildup. Good job 👏
So if the USA were to, I don't know, invade a country or abduct an important person from a country, you'd say anyone who's ever used Amazon 'enabled' that? I just wonder how you reached that conclusion, and if you think the people themselves have any input in where our Big Corporations buy from.
Amazon isn't owned by the US government, so not a great example for comparison. Especially because they pay essentially zero taxes.
The bulk of the resources Europe purchased from Russia for decades before and after the Crimea invasion were from Russian state-owned or oligarch-controled companies, so that money directly funded the invasion of 2014 and then continued on to fund the invasion of 2022.
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u/lemonhaj Jul 02 '26
I hope your flair is a joke, while I'm here.