And Just Like That, Finland Stopped Funding Russia’s War
The gas pipe from Russia is now closed.
This is a short one for celebration and a little happy dance, and just a tiny dose of angry. (Mostly, because I’ve got the sniffles so I want to rest over the weekend. I do have more anger to offer.)
So yes, it’s done for us. Gazprom stopped delivering gas to Finland on Saturday morning, as a result the sanctions placed on Russia because of the Ukraine invasion.
We were already down to 5% of our energy needs from gas, anyway, so Russian gas is not irreplaceable for Finland. Things will get more expensive, but it’s a necessary evil. We should use the opportunity to invest on renewables and move away from all fossil fuels.
But, all in all, it’s great news! We should have done this a long, long time ago. We should have completely moved away from Russian energy the first time Putin tried to freeze Ukraine to death in 2009, and then again in 2014.
The gas pipeline from Russia has been working non-stop for 48 years. It was part of our Cold War-era close relations with the Soviet Union, held by President Kekkonen, our Finlandizer-in-chief of 26 years.
We haven’t been willing to make the hard decisions over the past 20-something years of Putin’s murderous regime…
