While Russia’s battlefield behavior has been downright deplorable these last few weeks, their diplomatic lurches have been just as bad.
And now, what’s worse, it appears as though some of the nation’s commercial outfits were getting in on the tawdry trend.
Russian energy company RAO Nordic shut off electricity supplies to neighbouring Finland over the weekend, claiming that it had not received payments from Finland due to sanctions.
RAO Nordic, a subsidiary of the Russian energy company Inter RAO, suspended the export of electricity on May 14th according to an announcement made by Finland’s majority state-owned national electricity transmission grid operator Fingrid.
“In practice, the notification means that there will be no Russian electricity in Finland at all for the time being,” the Director of Operations at Fingrid Reima Päivinen told state broadcaster Yle.
Around ten per cent of Finland’s electricity is imported from Russia but Fingrid has claimed that Finns’ electrical needs will still be met even if no electricity is being imported from Russia at all.
The aforementioned operations director was not concerned.
“It is, of course, spring-summer and the amount of consumption has decreased from the peak winter consumption. Finland will do just fine without Russian electricity. Replacement electricity comes from domestic production or imports mainly from Sweden and the Baltics,” Päivinen said.
The claim of nonpayment was a dubious one, especially as the power plight appears to coincide with Finland’s decision to apply for membership in NATO.
