> Suppose the war ends. Will the Europeans keep boycotting the cheap russian gas?
How fast can Ukraine scrap the parts of the pipeline going through their own territory?
Even those countries that would quite like access to Russian gas, may just not have a choice in the matter.
And given we've already seen some spectacularly poor decision making by whoever fires the various missiles[0] that end up hitting multiple different nuclear reactors in the area, there's a non-zero risk of the entire border region suffering catastrophic (though likely not Chernobyl-1986 level[1]) radiation leak incidents.
This also makes it somewhat of a moot point to consider any mineral wealth besides oil, or even a return to normality for food output, at this point.
[0] Zaporizhzhia: both sides blamed the other, and irregardless of who did it, the nature of the damage says it was done by shelling; more recently Chernobyl's outer barrier was also hit.
[1] I think Russia still has some reactors with positive void coefficient in Kursk (near where Ukraine's counter-invasion was), but Ukraine itself has decommissioned all their positive void coefficient reactors.
So it's not impossible for another Chernobyl, but it's really unlikely.
How fast can Ukraine scrap the parts of the pipeline going through their own territory?
Even those countries that would quite like access to Russian gas, may just not have a choice in the matter.
And given we've already seen some spectacularly poor decision making by whoever fires the various missiles[0] that end up hitting multiple different nuclear reactors in the area, there's a non-zero risk of the entire border region suffering catastrophic (though likely not Chernobyl-1986 level[1]) radiation leak incidents.
This also makes it somewhat of a moot point to consider any mineral wealth besides oil, or even a return to normality for food output, at this point.
[0] Zaporizhzhia: both sides blamed the other, and irregardless of who did it, the nature of the damage says it was done by shelling; more recently Chernobyl's outer barrier was also hit.
[1] I think Russia still has some reactors with positive void coefficient in Kursk (near where Ukraine's counter-invasion was), but Ukraine itself has decommissioned all their positive void coefficient reactors.
So it's not impossible for another Chernobyl, but it's really unlikely.