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“The U.S.S.R. has announced plans to construct a natural gas pipeline from Siberia to West Germany. The pipeline is expected to be operational by 1984.” (November 16, 1981). [William Kevin Stoos, Manchester Union Leader, 1981]

Forcing the Europeans to reduce that plan from 2 pipelines (that would have each earned the USSR about $10 billion/year in hard currency) to 1, and delaying the operational date by 2 years, was a key part of the Reagan/Bill Casey plan to bankrupt the USSR. It was actually a part of one the main pillars of the plan to shut off earnings (the main part of which was to get the Saudis to massively increase oil production - which they did when we guaranteed their security); the other pillar was a massive increase in our military, which would force the USSR to have a similar massive increase (which it could not afford) into its own utterly non-productive military.

FWIW, Donald Trump campaigned on the same platform: massively increase the production of fossil fuels in the US, and massively bolster the military. Comrade/President Putin could not POSSIBLY have wanted Trump to win - this guy thinks that the dissolution of the USSR was the 20th Century’s “greatest geopolitical tragedy,” so why would he favor a candidate promising to implement some of the exact same policies as destroyed his beloved USSR?