The struggle over who controls the cash flows arising from fossil fuels sales to Europe dates back to 2003, when Putin rejected an Exxon bid for 51% control in

The struggle over who controls the cash flows arising from fossil fuels sales to Europe dates back to 2003, when Putin rejected an Exxon bid for 51% control in what was then Russia's primary oil center, Yukos. This would have meant Russia would have lost control of decisions over production levels, and much of the oil money from Europe would then have been recycled into the New York - London banking system. Putin's persecution of the London/New York affiliated oligarchs - Khodorkovsky, Berezinsky, etc. - dates to this era. It's no coincidence that the wave of US-sponsored 'Color Revolutions' then began in 2004, with an attempted instigation of something like the current Ukraine conflict in Georgia in 2008 being pushed hard by none other than Condi Rice (Chevron named an oil tanker after her for awhile). This dynamic also played out in Syria, where the Obama Administration was pushing Assad to take a proposed Qatar-Saudi-Israeli pipeline offer (2009-2010), which Assad rejected in favor of a Russia-Iran pipeline offer. We can be pretty sure if he'd taken the former there'd have been no massive CIA funding of Syrian rebel groups and Assad's domestic repression would have been viewed no differently than Saudi Arabia or Bahrain's by Washington. Indeed even Trump strongly opposed the Nordstream pipeline and its expansion, and promoted LNG exports to Europe as much as Biden has (although the destruction of the Nordstream pipeline with explosive charges seems to be quite the reckless escalation of that agenda). Oil stocks in the USA are up 50% since fall 2021... Again there are no 'good guys' in these conflicts, it's just organized crime cartels fighting over control of markets and resources. They do spend a lot of on PR budgets to hide this reality from the public as much as possible. Not sure whether this view would be characterized or 'misinformation' or 'disinformation', however. (They used to classify propaganda as black, grey and white, incidentally).