For all the stark warnings and ominous predictions made by the head of NATO today, one key fact remained unmentioned.
The West is still funding the Russian war effort to the tune of billions by buying oil and gas, funnelling vast amounts into an economy that is now fully militarised.
Russian gas exports to Europe went up by 20% last year and its LNG exports to the EU are now at record levels.
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Vladimir Putin’s Russia is now making more money from selling fossil fuels than Ukraine receives from allies.
NATO’s secretary general Mark Rutte did not mention any of that. But he did spell out what Russia is doing with all that hydrocarbon revenue.
It is using it to put its economy onto a war footing that is now pumping out munitions at a rate that puts the West to shame, to the extent Russia could have the capability to take on NATO in three to five years, according to Mr Rutte.
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The secretary general meant his speech in London as a warning and call to arms.
But it was also a shameful admission for the Western alliance he heads.
More than three years into this war, Russia is outstripping the entire Western bloc by four to one in terms of munitions production.
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Russia’s economy is 1/25th that of NATO’s combined economic might and crippled by sanctions and yet every three months pumps out more shells than the entire NATO bloc manages in a year.
And while Europe carries on funding Russia’s war effort by buying its oil and gas, none of that is going to change.
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We are now in the insane and obscene situation where European taxpayers will have to fork out more, a lot more, to counteract the threat of a militarised Russia, whose resurgence is being subsidised by Western countries buying its fossil fuels.
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Historians will look back on that and wonder why it was allowed to continue more than three years into this devastating conflict.
