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EU economic sanctions ramp up NATO war plan on Russia

Two-thirds of the EU loan – some €60 bn – is reportedly allocated for military aid. Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, said that the first tranche worth €45 bn will be transferred to Ukraine within weeks and that it would be used to increase the production of aerial combat drones

Strategic Culture Foundation, 24 April 2026, https://strategic-culture.su/news/2026/04/24/eu-economic-sanctions-ramp-up-nato-war-plan-on-russia/

The European Union announced its 20th round of economic sanctions against Russia this week. The bloc of 27 nations began imposing sanctions on Moscow when the conflict in Ukraine erupted in February 2022. Every six months, the EU has been extending these economic measures, which Brussels claims is support for Ukraine to “deter Russian aggression.”

The 20th round of sanctions unveiled this week attempts to go much further in inflicting damage on the Russian economy. It was flagged as the biggeset package yet and a “multi-layered targeting of key sectors” of the Russian economy, primarily its energy industry.

It is tempting to dismiss the EU sanctions policy as feeble and a form of insanity. The bloc keeps repeating an action expecting a different result each time, when the record shows that the action of sanctions is having little detrimental impact on Russia. If anything, it is the EU that has suffered an economic downturn as it unilaterally cut itself off from Russian oil and gas, the traditional source of affordable energy feedstock for European industries. Russia’s economy has not crashed as was anticipated when the sanctions were first imposed more than four years ago. In fact, the Russian Federation has maintained a robust economic performance as it finds alternative markets in Asia for its oil and gas products. The soaring price for a barrel of crude due to the reckless U.S.-Israeli aggression on Iran has given Russia a further boost.

However, it would be a mistake to simply brush off the EU sanctions as futile and self-defeating.

There is a more blatant and sinister aspect to the new round of sanctions. Brussels is nakedly showing its war agenda. The new measures aim to restrict all sectors of Russian energy production, including “exploration, extraction, refining and transportation.” The EU is endeavoring to tighten restrictions on “third countries” to prevent Russia from circumventing existing embargoes on shipping, port access and trade. Whether these new measures achieve their objective of “crippling the Russian economy” is debatable. But it is the belligerent intention – stated now with more determination – that is significant. The EU is brazenly laying out a plan to strangle Russia in conjunction with upping the military threat.

It is the accompanying developments that are ominous and which give full meaning to the economic measures.

This week the EU hailed that its €90 billion ($105 bn) loan to Ukraine had finally been approved. That financial aid was blocked by Hungary since December. But with the recent election loss for Viktor Orbán’s government, Budapest’s veto has been lifted under the new prime minister, Péter Magyar. EU leaders were ecstatic that the financial transfer to Ukraine can now go ahead.

Two-thirds of the EU loan – some €60 bn – is reportedly allocated for military aid. Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, said that the first tranche worth €45 bn will be transferred to Ukraine within weeks and that it would be used to increase the production of aerial combat drones. “Drones from Ukraine for Ukraine,” she said by way of trying to give the impression that the EU is not a party to the war.

An EU leaders’ two-day summit held in Cyprus on April 24-25 was reported with celebratory mood. Von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa, along with the EU’s Foreign Affairs Commissioner, Kaja Kallas, were cock-a-hoop at the “breakthrough” of releasing the largest single financial package to Ukraine so far in combination with the new economic sanctions aimed at drilling down on Russia’s economic core. Attending the summit in Cyprus was Ukraine’s nominal president, Vladimir Zelensky, who reportedly joined the EU leaders for dinner to discuss new developments.

It gets even more sinister. The Kiev regime has been stepping up deep air strikes on Russian energy and other industrial infrastructure. There is no doubt the regime is being assisted with NATO expertise in finding such wide-ranging targets in Russia’s vast territory. This week, for example, a drone strike hit an industrial facility in Novokuybyshevsk in the central Samara region, nearly 900 kilometers southeast of Moscow and nearly 2,000 kms from the warzone in Donbass.

Clearly, the EU’s economic strikes are designed to reinforce the damage that NATO is trying to inflict with drones and missiles on Russia’s industrial base. These are not separate initiatives but an integral war strategy.

In announcing the latest round of sanctions Kaja Kallas could hardly contain her Russophobic glee. “Today we have broken the deadlock. On top of the €90-billion loan for Ukraine, we have adopted the 20th sanctions package,” she said.

Deceptively, the sanctions were billed as “increasing pressure on Russia to stop its brutal war of aggression and engage in meaningful negotiations towards a just and last peace.”

That’s a cynical con – a con that is betrayed by the EU’s own stated objective of “crippling” the Russian economy. How can one have a “just and lasting peace” by crippling a country?

The real purpose of the funds that EU citizens will have to pay through decades of indebtedness is to escalate NATO’s war in Ukraine against Russia. The economic sanctions are war measures aimed at maximising the impact of military attacks.

Other developments this week raise the stakes to even more sinister levels.

French President Emmanuel Macron and Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk discussed joint nuclear weapons “scenarios” in a bilateral summit in Gdansk. The French leader wants to share his country’s nuclear weapons capabilities with other European countries. It is reported that French and Polish warplanes will begin joint exercises on flying nuclear weapons in the Baltic region. This is evidently meant as a threat to Russia. It amounts to Paris and Warsaw carrying out training exerises for nuclear strikes on Russia.

In yet another provocative development, it is reported that Britain is leading a NATO Joint Expeditionary Force to formulate a naval plan to blockade the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad located between Poland and Lithuania. Kaliningrad provides Russia with vital port access to the Baltic Sea.

The European NATO leaders are concerned that U.S. President Donald Trump has lost interest in the “Ukraine project” against Russia owing to his reckless war with Iran. That is why they are ramping up the war effort against Russia while telling barefaced lies about wanting to achieve “lasting peace.”

So far, the EU’s economic sanctions against Russia have been an abject failure. But the failure of economic measures is no longer the point. It is what they reveal about an intensifying NATO war plan against Russia.

Moscow has repeatedly called for a negotiated end to the conflict while the EU and NATO accuse Russian leader Vladimir Putin of “not wanting peace.”

People can make their own minds up about who the aggressors are. NATO is at war with Russia and is not interested in negotiations. Criminally, the NATO aggressors are creating a boiling frog situation for Russia. The European russophobic leaders seem to want war at any cost.

April 30, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, EUROPE | Leave a comment

Norway says “nuclear renaissance” too expensive

April 23, 2026, https://beyondnuclear.org/norway-says-nuclear-renaissance-too-expensive/

Report illuminates new reactors can’t compete with the accelerating growth of renewable energy 

The “Survey and assessment of the status of available nuclear reactor technologies and designs” published on March 16, 2026 as the final report on Norway’s energy policy was made public on April 8, 2026. It was prepared by the international team of energy consulting and architectural firms, the US-based Amentum and the Oslo, Norway-based Multiconsult Group, on government contract by the Norwegian Nuclear Commission. The Commission was established in June 2024 to evaluate the inclusion of nuclear power in the Scandianavian country’s energy policy. The consultants were tasked to review the current global status and trends of nuclear reactor technologies, including their readiness, flexibility, supply chains, and costs.

Norway has never sited, constructed or operated a commercial atomic power plant. But back in 2022, the M Vest Group Norway (M Vest Energy AS), a Norwegian oil and gas corporation, through its specialized subsidiary Norsk Kjernekraft, established partnerships with the nuclear divisions of  the UK’s Rolls-Royce and the French startup Hexana and lobbied the Norwegian government to promote and advance the development of atomic power in Norway.  Following the Commission’s examination of the consultants’ report, Reuters news service announced the Commission’s decision, “Norway should not work towards nuclear power generation now, commission finds.”

Interestingly enough, Norway currently gets 89.9% of the nation’s electrical power from thousands of hydroelectric facilities sited across the country with wind power running a meager and distant second (8.6%). Still, Norway is well on the way to generating 100% of its electrical power from renewable energy.  Even though Norway is currently producing an electricity surplus, the nuclear industry found its way into pressuring the Norwegian government to get with a Scandinavian “nuclear renaissance” to accommodate the projected AI/data center revolution with its own fleet of light water Small Modular Reactors (SMR) and Advanced Modular Reactors (AMR). While the report’s commissioned focus is on Norway, it shines a bright light on the much ballyhooed but still not-ready-for-prime-time nuclear power technologies now pushed worldwide.

Norway’s report confirms that the new promises of nuclear power provide little more than a “spike in promotional materials and many bold claims around technology, cost and schedule over the past 3-4 years, combined with hype associated with the energy demands created by Artificial Intelligence.”

The Norway survey astutely finds, “Given the nuclear sector’s claims that modularisation will deliver factory-build quality and increase the speed of construction, thereby reducing finance costs, it is not surprising that these technology families are attractive, but the arguments are not yet proven.”

Despite the absence of any final construction cost figures given a handful of western SMR or AMR construction projects have only just started, the Norwegian analyses expect first-of-a-kind SMR designs to be significantly more expensive than the few completed large gigawatt nuclear reactor on a per-kilowatt basis. That said, the first-of-a-kind Vogtle units 3 and 4 finished in Georgia were first estimated at a cost of completion for $14 billion were finally finished and commissioned at an estimated $35 billion.

The Norway-commissioned analyses also predict higher fixed operation and maintenance costs on a per-kilowatt basis for SMRs compared to large Generation 3 reactors at Georgia’s Vogtle 3 and 4 units.  Additionally, the Commission report predicts that yearly nuclear fuel costs for SMRs could be as much as 82% higher than those for large gigawatt reactors due to “lower plant density and shorter burnup cycles.”

Other predicted first-of-a-kind SMRs costs that will be “Probably Higher” than the large gigawatt reactors will include: Nuclear Waste (post ten years operation); Long Term Nuclear Waste Disposal; Spent Fuel (post ten years operation), and; Decommissioning.

The report’s combined findings on all these uncontrolled costs appear to be the most impactful analyses that dissuaded Norway from opening Pandora’s nuclear energy box at this time.

We all should all be dissuaded, given the demonstration that renewable energy is significantly more affordable, faster and more reliable to deploy from a broad range of resources (photovoltaic solar cells, on and offshore wind, hydro and tidal power, etc). We can now couple that with economically deliverable utility-grade energy storage over a widening range of systems. Why are we being given the bums’ rush into a nuclear future with its unpredictably high financial risks, unreliable and increasing significant construction cost overruns, recurring project cancellations and abandonment with sunk costs, uninsurable severe nuclear accident risks, and ultimately the unresolved biological isolation of nuclear waste that offers only environmental liability without a watt of benefit to future generations?

April 29, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, EUROPE | Leave a comment