Mahrer reacts to Rauch-Sager: “This is an insinuation”

The head of the cabinet of EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Björn Seibert, is said to have been in weekly contact with leading experts from the US government since the beginning of the year in order to lay down the main features of the transatlantic sanctions regime.

Subsequently, in January, i.e. many weeks before the actual outbreak of war, the five possible war scenarios together with the appropriate sanction regimes are said to have been available. The general principle: the more extensive Putin’s aggression, the sharper the sanctions reaction.

This is where Harald Mahrer’s criticism comes into play: “I absolutely reject the Russian war of aggression, and I’m not at all against sanctions, that’s what politics is for,” he says.

His accusation is that the sanctions were apparently thought of “only with one half of the brain”: “If the USA and the European Union have been working on sanctions since November, why hasn’t work been done on securing the energy supply since November?”

As early as the second week of the war, the domestic social partners had pointed out the danger to the energy supply.

It is now clear to Mahrer that the sanctions have not really been thought through to the end.

As an example, he cites what is happening with Russian oil: “India buys it on a large scale and ends up – with a corresponding surcharge – via detours in western industrialized countries.”