You may not like this post, or really disagree with it. I am usually a very good-humored person and am very saddened by what is happening in Ukraine, but I have to get this off my chest.

We are now more than three months into the war between Russia and the Western world, and it seems that with our sanctions, we are mainly at our own throats. Everything is becoming more expensive, scarcer, more difficult… We’re even going to burn coal again to have enough electricity, soon! And that while farmers and citizens are already in breathlessness because of the new nitrogen measures! How crooked is that?

And what about companies like us that traded with Russian people for a living? We can no longer transfer money and our stuff doesn’t come into the country! Okay, it’s just socks and luckily I have a job besides this hobby that got out of hand, but I’m sure there are a lot of people, whose income is totally dependent on it!

I’m very curious to see how all this goes on now and how long it will take. Fortunately, we had received several large bags of goodies just before Russia invaded the Ukraine, so we have plenty of nice things for the coming winter season, but that will certainly not be for everyone. And think about the people and small businesses there, who depend on this kind of trade… Is it right that it is the ordinary people and small businesses who have to pay for the power games of politicians?

I get it, you can’t let Putin have his way from our Western perspective, but I still feel strongly that it is mostly the Ukrainian and Russian citizens who are suffering from this war. And we, ordinary people! Frans Timmermans, Von der Leyen, Sigrid Kaag or Rob Jetten don’t eat a sandwich less because of it, but with us the bills are shooting up and the thermostat has to be lowered! Because remember, that gas tap in Russia is closing because we don’t want to pay in rubles. Our politicians have simply decided that their symbolic sanctions are more important than the welfare of their own citizens. But they don’t like to say that, at the table at Jinek….

I am very much against what Putin is doing and I agree with you that we should shout about it, but… When I see what the consequences are for Dutch and Belgian households, how much it all comes at the expense of ordinary people there and how sadly little the sanctions actually help to change the Russian rulers’ minds, I get angry. The ruble is at record highs, Putin is smiling and selling our gas to China and other countries and we are paying blue to let our leaders play nice!

And America? That, meanwhile, is rubbing its hands with a broad grin, because not only are we buying more gas and oil from them, we’re buying a whole lot more weapons!

Pfffff, enough grumbling! I’m going to walk the doggies in woods to cool off!