Global Warming Poster Child Greta Thunberg Makes Common Cause With the U.S State Department in Its Efforts to Destabilize Russia

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Feb 5, 2021

International political observers have been fixated on a Moscow court’s decision to sentence Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny to roughly three-and-a-half years in prison on February 2, 2021 for violating the terms of his parole.

The Russian government was quick to attack foreign input on a matter of Russian domestic policy. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a Moscow news outlet RBK that foreign states should not “meddle in the internal affairs of a sovereign state. And we recommend that everyone deals with their own problems.” 

She added, “Believe me, there are enough of their own problems in these countries, there are plenty of issues to deal with.”

Navalny’s sentencing was criticized by a number of Western leaders. U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken declared he was “deeply concerned” by the imprisonment of Navalny.  He said that the U.S. government would be working with its allies to “hold Russia accountable for failing to uphold the rights of its citizens.”

Teenage environmentalist activist Greta Thunberg even jumped in on the Navalny mania. She tweeted on February 2, “So in the year 2021 Europe chooses to meet its energy demand by building a pipeline to transport more fossil fuels from the ones responsible for this. Shameful on so many levels. #FreeNavalny”

Before his return to Russia, Navalny was undergoing treatment for an alleged poisoning in Germany in 2020. The timing of Navalny’s return to Russia and the protests that kicked off following his return —which coincided with Germany’s decision to maintain the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project —has many wondering if there is something bigger at play. 

The Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline facilitates the flow of Russian gas into Germany without having to go through Ukraine. Given the geoeconomic implications of such a project, U.S. officials have responded in a heavy-handed manner by sanctioning the project. French government officials have also called on Germany to scrap the project in light of Navalny’s prison sentence. 

A number of commentators such as the geopolitical risk consultant Niccolo Soldo have pointed out that American liquefied natural gas is considerably more expensive, while Russian LNG is cheaper for Germans. Naturally, American LNG companies stand to benefit from derailing Nord Stream 2, which is why they’re pushing for the U.S. government to continue taking punitive action against the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. 

Thunberg’s praise of Navalny is indicative of an intriguing dynamic taking place in real time, wherein neoliberal/neoconservative hawks are making strange bedfellows with environmentalists abroad. This especially holds true with German Green Party’s opposition to Nord Stream 2, where they have effectively formed an anti-pipeline coalition with Atlanticists who are fearful of an ascendant Russia. 

BLP previously reported on the Russian government’s concerns with Big Tech’s excessive censorship of political discourse. Strangely, Russia has emerged as a force to balance the rise of America’s woke state which seeks to export its values abroad, consequences be damned. 

We can only expect tensions between the American and Russian government to escalate in the next four years given the U.S.’s fanatic foreign policy.

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