Russia has made every effort to keep Europe supplied. European governments in hock to U.S. imperial policy have made effort to wreak havoc on their own people.

Freezing households, crippling energy costs and associated soaring food bills are the outcome of the United States and NATO’s war agenda toward Russia. The summer season has brought sweltering heatwaves across Europe (and elsewhere) but in a few months, up to 500 million citizens of the European Union are going to face record levels of deprivation as gas shortages from Russia become fully manifest.

Russia has made every effort to keep Europe supplied. European governments in hock to U.S. imperial policy have made effort to wreak havoc on their own people.

Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto while on a visit to Moscow sounded a rare note of sanity when he stated that Europe simply cannot survive without Russian energy supply. Other European leaders, however, are blinded by irrational Russophobia and subservience to American dictate. A day of reckoning is due if, that is, doomsday can be avoided.

This self-inflicted suicide of European nations has been mandated by governments that have prostrated themselves to Washington’s imperial agenda of confrontation with Russia. The war in Ukraine is the tragic outcome of a years-long US-led NATO belligerence towards Russia. Anyone who dares state that objective truth is vilified as a Kremlin propagandist. Western public discussion and critical thinking have been all but obliterated. Massive censorship of the internet has augmented that obliteration. This online journal, for example, has been blacklisted and blocked for readers in the U.S. and Europe by governments that profess to uphold free speech and independent thinking.

NATO’s relentless eastwards expansion and weaponizing of a Nazi-infested Ukrainian regime has created the current conflict and destructive consequences, including energy and food supply problems.

So obsessed are they with Russophobia and servility to Washington’s aggressive imperialism, the European elite is forcing their populations into an unprecedented Cold War that risks turning into a catastrophic world war. A war that would inevitably lead to a nuclear conflagration.

Rather than backing away from the abyss, the unelected European Commission – the executive power of the European Union – this week ordered all 27 member states to make massive cuts in gas consumption. The cuts amount to 15 percent. The measures are but a futile attempt to cover the inevitable calamity of massive energy shortages that will hit the EU this winter because of a drastic reduction in imports of Russian fuel. What the EU’s so-called political leadership is showing is a callous disregard for the living conditions of its citizens.

We are seeing the modern-day equivalent of dispatching millions of people into the muddy, bloody trenches of World War One. We may look back and wonder at that barbarity and how millions went along with it. What difference is there with today’s callousness and barbarity?

EU leaders like Ursula von der Leyen accuse Russia of “energy blackmail” and “weaponization of gas”. But such scapegoating is contemptible. The crisis situation has been engendered by the EU blindly following Washington’s agenda of sabotaging decades of reliable and affordable energy supply from Russia. The Nord Stream 2 pipeline was technically complete last year to deliver some 55 billion cubic meters of gas – or about one-third of Russia’s former total supply to the EU. Germany has chosen to suspend that pipeline at Washington’s beckoning and bullying. Even the already functioning Nord Stream 1 pipeline has been disrupted because of Western economic sanctions imposed on Russia. Scheduled maintenance of turbines was held up and nearly threatened a complete shutdown until Russia’s Gazprom managed to reconnect on Thursday despite Western obstacles.

Poland and Ukraine have also cut the overland pipeline supplies of Russian gas that were serving the EU.

Because of unilateral Western sanctions on Russian banks, Moscow was compelled to request payment for gas exports in rubles. Some European countries have refused to comply with that new reasonable payment arrangement and thus have opted to forfeit the purchase of Russian gas.

For decades, Russia has proven to be a reliable partner in providing affordable and abundant gas as well as oil to the European Union. That strategic partnership for energy supply was the cornerstone of European economies. Germany’s industries and export-led economy that drives the rest of the EU thrived on Russian energy. Perversely, the European political elite has abased itself to consort with American imperial interests, rather than protecting the interests of European populations. So much for representative democracy!

The naked self-interest of the U.S. in selling Europe its own more expensive gas is blatant. Only a fool, or a tool, could pretend otherwise.

As noted already in previous SCF editorials, Washington’s hegemonic ambitions of global dominance and of salvaging its failing capitalist power depend crucially on pursuing a new Cold War against Russia and China. The world is being thrown into perilous turmoil because of this criminal ambition. Laughably, the European leaders hold pretensions of independence and global influence. They are nothing but pathetic lackeys to American power who are willingly sacrificing their populations in the process.

The desperation of the U.S. regime and its European minions is such that their societies are teetering on the brink of collapse from economic meltdown. Their reckless warmongering towards Russia (and China) is exacerbating and accelerating their own collapse. The real danger is that the U.S. and its NATO accomplices are now betting on escalating the war in Ukraine as a way to avert the demise of their own nations – a demise that they have induced.

At a security conference this week in Aspen, Colorado, Britain’s MI6 chief warned that “winter is coming” and Western resolve will be severely tested because of cascading societal deprivation over energy blackouts. Richard Moore urged for even more weapons supply to the Kiev regime – on top of the already tinderbox situation. His reasoning, like others in the NATO axis, is to double down on a proxy war with Russia in order to avert domestic repercussions and the implosion of the Western front under Washington’s command. The very future of the U.S.-led NATO axis is at stake.

That means that as European and American citizens suffer more hardships from their leaders’ wanton warmongering towards Russia, these same Western despots are going to gamble it all on a last-ditch offensive against Russia via Ukraine. Politics and diplomacy have been abandoned. War in Ukraine is set to get worse precisely because Western elites are losing an existential conflict. Ultimately, their conflict is an internal one to do with shoring up their own crumbling inherent power to rule over their masses. That, in turn, is a concomitant of the historic failing of their capitalist economies. Militarism and war, as in past times of failure, are once again being dredged up as a desperate “solution” for their failure.

Western citizens are finding out – and paying dearly for – the grim reality of Cold War. Rather than being held accountable for reckless, criminal machinations, the insane misleaders are now trying to turn it into a Hot War.

Disaster is not inevitable. It is certainly being courted. But people can avoid the abyss by taking control out of the hands of their criminal rulers. A historic choice in direction is looming. The Western mis-rulers are trying to prevent a correct choice from being taken by ginning up war.