The recent Supreme Court decisions in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen and Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization have pushed almost all discussion of other issues off the front pages, but there is still that nasty little war going on in Ukraine. I have made my position clear: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was very wrong, and almost everyone wants to see Ukraine win against the Russians. But I, at least, do not think it is worth risking what Major Kong called “nuclear combat, toe to toe with the Russkies.”

President Joe Biden and the leaders of the NATO nations have all said that Russia’s invasion is wrong, wrong, wrong, and that something ought to be done, but reality has a way of biting people in the gluteus maximus, and as the G-7 leaders meet in Berlin to decide just what to do, that reality is staring them dead in the eye. From The Wall Street Journal:

G-7 Summit Exposes West’s Challenges in Tackling Russia

Economic fallout is hampering further sanctions against Moscow as Ukraine demands more weapons to halt the Russian advance

By Bojan Pancevski | Tuesday, June 28, 2022 | 9:31 AM EDT

The original picture caption is: “G-7 leaders displayed some unity during their summit as they pledged their unwavering support to Ukraine.
Photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters.” Click to enlarge.

BERLIN—The Group of Seven rich democracies ended their summit with an agreement to discuss a batch of new sanctions against Russia, but the gathering underlined the limits of using economic tools to punish Russia four months after its invasion of Ukraine.

While weapons deliveries have made an immediate difference on the battlefield and Ukraine has been clamoring for more equipment to repel Moscow’s forces, sanctions have proven slow to take effect, some of them have backfired against the West, and new ones have so far been too complex to deploy quickly.

G-7 leaders displayed some unity during their three-day summit in the German Alps as they pledged their unwavering support to Ukraine, with no sign of dissent on public display. Yet Kyiv and some Western experts said the Russian advance could only be halted in the short term with more heavy weapons.

The unprecedented sanctions against Russia implemented by the G-7 and other nations—targeting Moscow’s economy, energy exports and central-bank reserves—have caused global market volatility and raised energy costs.

Now high inflation, slowing growth, and the specter of energy shortages in Europe this winter are damping the West’s appetite for tougher sanctions against Moscow.

The photo caption originally said that the G-7 leaders “pledged their unwavering support to Ukraine,” but, of course, that support is wavering, because the sanctions imposed so far are hurting their own people. The only thing I see in the photo is further evidence that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson still doesn’t know how to brush his hair.

Divergences among the leaders of the U.S., Canada, Britain, France, Italy and Japan prevented them from agreeing on concrete new sanctions, with the group only agreeing to start work on measures ranging from a price cap on Russian oil purchases to a gold embargo. With most immediately available options for punishing Russia largely exhausted, only more complicated and more controversial alternatives remain on the table.

There’s more at the original, but that last paragraph is really amusing. A “price cap on Russian oil purchases” means:

Ahead of the G-7 gathering, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that the U.S. was involved in “extremely active” talks with European allies about efforts to form a buyers’ cartel and set a cap on the price of Russian oil. To enforce such a cap, she said last week that officials were reviewing a possible exemption to the European Union’s ban on insuring shipments of Russian oil that would allow insurers to cover shipments of Russian oil only if the sales price falls under a cap.

A goal in the talks was to keep Russian oil available on global markets to buyers such as India and China, which could help stabilize prices already trending at roughly double prepandemic levels, while constructing a mechanism that Western countries could use to restrict Russian revenues from the sales.

In plain language, the G-7 nations would set up buying Russian oil themselves, which thus guarantees that Russia would be paid for their oil, and that, if Russian oil is below the market price for the petroleum from other nations, we’d be using more oil from Russia than anywhere else.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that Russia would sell its oil for less than the market price, but would sell it to buyers who were not part of the cartel.

It’s simple: NATO have just about run out of economic measures to pressure or punish Vladimir Vladimirovich. The easy sanctions were applied almost immediately, and even some of those are hurting the West as much as Russia. Russia’s oil revenues have soared this year, including since the invasion, and now:

Germany will restart coal-fired power plants in order to conserve natural gas, the country’s economy minister announced on Sunday, amid concerns about a looming supply shortage after Russia cut gas deliveries to Europe this week.

We had already noted that the Europeans had accepted Mr Putin’s demands on gas payments to avoid more shut-offs. A fact that many Americans don’t know: much of democratic Europe, and especially the wealthier European nations, are further north than our border with Canada. Parts of France, almost all of Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, Poland, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic and the Baltic States are north of the 49^th parallel that forms much of our border from the Lake of the Woods to the Strait of Georgia. The different geography moderates winters somewhat, with those nations not the iceboxes that Minnesota and North Dakota can be in the winter, but it can still get plenty cold in those nations, especially as they get further from the ocean. Germany, the wealthiest European nation, in particular, needs Russian natural gas or Germans will freeze this coming winter.

Back to the first cited article:

G-7 nations and their partners now must decide on a strategy in case of a prolonged economic confrontation with Russia, and educate voters about the possible consequences such as gas rationing in areas of Europe that are reliant on Russian exports, said John E. Smith, a partner at law firm Morrison & Foerster and the former head of the U.S.’s key sanctions body, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

Germany’s government warned last week of potential gas shortages that could trigger the closure of factories and the possible rationing of gas supplies to homes, many of which use the fuel for heating.

“Russia bets that it can withstand the harm to its own economy more than the U.S. and Europe are willing to bear,” Mr. Smith said.

Are the German people willing to suffer through job losses and the rationing of heat during the winter to punish Russia? When the dining room table is bare, and the living room temperature is just 55º F, the Germans might care about themselves more than the Ukrainians!

So, what’s left? The economic sanctions have not forced Mr Putin to back down, and while Ukraine managed to hold off the Russians during the spring распу́тица, the time of mud as the ground thaws and the snow melts, Russia’s actions have now moved toward eastern Ukraine, where they were already entrenched following the 2014 invasion, and the Russians are slowly advancing. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is continuing to demand more and more artillery, heavy weapons and aerial defense systems, but the more weapons sent to Ukraine, the closer NATO becomes to being directly involved in the war. While various legal fictions can be devised to say that no, NATO are not at war with Russia, it doesn’t matter whether we believe it, it matters whether the Russians accept it.

It’s a very good thing that the G-7 and NATO leaders are being very wary about fighting Russia. There’s just not that much good I can see about starting World War III.