0:01

See, we're getting closer now. That's the

0:04

Vladimir Rusinov. That ship

0:06

was in Siberia seven

0:08

days ago and it's

0:10

heading to Zebruga with

0:13

its shipment of liquefied natural

0:15

gas for the European market. This

0:20

is a detective story. One involving

0:22

two massive ships, a nondescript

0:24

office in Glasgow and 10

0:27

billion euros going from Europe

0:29

straight to Putin's front line

0:31

with Ukraine. Our

0:33

leaders promised action. We are determined

0:36

to stand up against Russia's

0:38

brutal war. This is now the

0:40

moment for Europe to do something that is long

0:42

overdue and that is

0:44

finally to wean ourselves of dependence

0:46

on Russian oil and gas. As

0:49

you know, we aim to reduce this dependency

0:51

on Russian fossil fuels and to get rid

0:53

of it. Yet, as

0:55

a Sky News investigation has revealed, far

0:57

from the taps being turned off, Europe

1:00

remains reliant on Russian LNG.

1:03

Liquid natural gas and

1:06

British companies are facilitating its

1:08

transfer. We were

1:10

told sanctions would cripple Russia's economy, not to

1:12

mention its war on Ukraine. That

1:15

clearly has not happened. I'm

1:18

Neil Patterson and on today's Sky News Daily

1:21

we'll tell you why. He's

1:25

back on the podcast, our economics and data

1:28

editor, Ed Conghorn. We're getting our money's worth

1:30

out of you this weekend. Look, we've just

1:32

been hearing from Boris Johnson, Ursula

1:34

von der Leyen, the European Commission president.

1:37

Our political leaders were

1:39

absolutely adamant, weren't they, that

1:41

we would stop using Russian

1:44

fossil fuel. There's this conventional wisdom

1:46

that says that basically the war

1:48

happens. Europe said, OK, we're going

1:50

to stop taking your gas. Then Nord Stream

1:52

pipeline, you know, that pipeline that goes through

1:54

the Baltic, that was kind of shut down.

1:56

There was there was sabotage or whatever it

1:58

was. And I think people. mention

16:00

the fact that, you know, originally this Russian Central

16:02

Bank was absolutely stuffed full of currency in the

16:04

first place because probably they saw some

16:06

of this coming. Yeah. And I think this

16:09

was always going to be a long war. It

16:11

was always going to be tough. And it was

16:13

always going to come to the question of how much

16:16

are you willing to sacrifice your way of living to

16:18

prosecute this war? And in

16:20

Europe right now, the revealed preference of

16:23

how much people are willing to sacrifice

16:25

their way of living is not much.

16:27

Is this one of those situations though,

16:29

where the body politic, where the likes

16:31

of you and me have to be

16:33

slightly more mature in our thinking about

16:36

things? This is realpolitik. Yes, we are

16:38

in a conflict, you know, with Russia

16:40

via Ukraine, but at the same time,

16:42

life goes on in this country.

16:44

Business goes on. We still need a cup of tea

16:46

in the morning and the kettle to boil, and we

16:48

need the heating to come on at night. Energy,

16:51

these base substances, that

16:54

is the foundation of our lives. And

16:56

you don't spend much time thinking about energy or

16:58

where it comes from until suddenly it's gone. You

17:01

don't spend much time thinking about steel and where

17:03

it comes from until suddenly it's gone. Or the

17:05

same thing with, you know, PPE during COVID. Things

17:07

that seem kind of whatever

17:10

are incredibly important when push comes

17:12

to shove. And Russia, it just

17:14

happens to have, not

17:16

a monopoly, but an enormous control over

17:19

those basic materials that we all need.

17:21

And right now in Europe, we don't

17:23

have much in the way of our

17:25

own energy production. And we are being

17:28

shown as enormously vulnerable. And following on

17:30

from our conversation on the podcast yesterday

17:32

and the conspiracy of silence that

17:35

the Institute for Fiscal Studies saw in

17:37

our two main parties and their manifestos

17:39

and their plans, again, this

17:42

is another issue that

17:44

frankly, at best has been

17:47

dealt with tangentially by

17:49

our politicians. At best. And you know, I've

17:51

tried and tried and tried to get kind

17:53

of firm responses from government on this. But

17:56

again, think about the car thing. Okay. Everyone

17:58

looks at the data that we've had on

18:00

Sky immediately comes to the same conclusion, which

18:02

is it looks like UK cars are going

18:05

to Russia by the back door via Azerbaijan.

18:07

You can't prove it 100% because you can't

18:09

track them once they leave the country, but

18:11

it just looks so, so

18:13

obvious. Azerbaijan has just

18:15

become one of our biggest trading partners

18:18

for cars, suddenly taking more luxury cars

18:20

than Switzerland, for heaven's sake. So

18:22

everyone with half brains, they would look at that and

18:24

go, there's something kind of a bit rum here. But

18:28

then whether it's the business secretary or the

18:30

shadow business secretary, do they want

18:32

to clamp down on our biggest physical

18:34

export that earns this country hundreds of

18:36

millions of pounds just in that, in

18:38

terms of that particular trade? No, they

18:41

kind of don't. And so again, you

18:43

run into this rail politic, as

18:45

you call it, of, you know, the

18:48

sanctions are a really noble idea. But when it

18:50

comes to implementing them, it's really, it's much tougher.

18:52

Get the hand on the heart. Come on. Do

18:55

you think anyone outside this room cares? Yes, I

18:57

actually do think people out there care. I think

18:59

there's widespread support for Ukraine versus Putin. So I

19:01

do think that there's a lot of people who

19:04

would like for these sanctions to work, who would

19:06

like for Ukraine to be able to do well

19:08

on the battlefield rather than being kind of overpowered

19:10

by Russian might. And so I hope that people

19:12

can have listened to stories like this and think,

19:15

well, that's just not good enough. Because it's not,

19:17

you know, it's not really, it's not the story

19:19

that we've been sold by our government, our ministers.

19:22

And yet that is what is happening. The more

19:24

you delve into it, the more of these depressing

19:26

holes you see where it turns out we're not

19:28

actually implementing this stuff as well as we said

19:30

that we would. Nice bit of work, Ed. Thanks

19:33

very much. Of

19:37

course, we offered a right of reply

19:39

to those mentioned in today's podcast. The

19:41

UK PNI club, which ensures the Vladimir

19:43

Rusinov and a number of other LNG

19:45

carriers said this, the

19:48

direct carriage of LNG from the

19:50

Yamal to Zebrugge and provision of

19:52

insurance services for such carriage is

19:54

not presently sanctioned. If the

19:56

EU and G7 nations were to change

19:58

their policy, the