Weird! Russia backs off demands that it gas be paid for in roubles...

 via Reuters

Russia will not immediately demand that buyers pay for its gas exports in roubles, the Kremlin said on Wednesday, promising a gradual shift and saying Russia should work on an idea to widen the list of its exports requiring rouble payment.

President Vladimir Putin issued an order last week for Russian gas, which accounts for 40% of European needs, to paid for in roubles instead of dollars or euros.

Earlier on Wednesday, Russia's top lawmaker Vyacheslav Volodin said the European Union would have to pay in roubles if it wanted Russian gas and said oil, grain, metals, fertiliser, coal and timber exports could be priced the same way. read more

The government, the central bank and Gazprom (GAZP.MM) are due to present proposals for the switch by Thursday.

Asked whether the payments should be in roubles starting from Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: "Absolutely no."

"As we discussed before, payments and delivery is a time consuming process ... This does not mean that a tomorrow's delivery should be paid (in roubles). From a technological point of view, this is a more prolonged process," he said.

Here 

First a weird war.

Russian forces held back by protesters?  That's some strange shit!  Russian forces abandoning vehicles, surrendering en masse and basically not fighting as combined arms teams? Strange shit!

Now?

Now the West has basically sought to cripple the Russian economy, the Russians have a way to bring at least Europe to its knees and get a little payback and again the Russians do some strange shit!

I don't get it.

Maybe I'm twisted but I would seek to extract every ounce of pain from a country that tried to put my own in a hurt locker.

The restraint has been impressive (Mariupol has been bombed hard but I still believe even there they're holding back...Kyiv had hardly been hit...relatively speaking).

The only answer is that Russia still views themselves as part of the European community.

Obviously they still feel kinship there so they're not going for the throat punch followed with thumbs in the eye.

Europe dodged a bullet.

Sidenote.  Turkey, a country that the EU has shunned is hosting peace talks, and Russia itself is keeping the EU afloat even while NATO is pushing exercises up against its border, even though intel hasn't stated ONCE that the Russians were gonna make a move into Eastern Europe.  WEIRD SHIT!

This war is just plain strange.  I don't get it at all. Is this the real future?  Half hearted affairs?  Peer combat being limited to just the battlefield and not a full effort across societies and govts?

I am stunned by all this.  Remember the warnings of cyber attacks?  The only cyber attacks that have happened have been against the Russian govt, not them, but our citizens!  Supposedly Russian sponsored cyber criminals turned off the gas on the east coast a few years ago.  During war, savage sanctions and seizures of assets, Russia does nothing...I've been waiting for a massive outage on the east and west coast due to cyber activity but NOTHING!

The Russian reaction has been SOFT as hell.  I would have thought the response would have been MUCH MORE vicious than its been.

I've got to be missing something.