Europe is punching Russia where it hurts

This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a pugilistic panoply of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. Sign up here.Today’s Agenda Getting punched in the mo [Bloomberg]( Follow Us [Get the newsletter]( This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a pugilistic panoply of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. [Sign up here](. Today’s Agenda - Getting [punched in the molecules]( is painful. - Crypto enthusiasts are [buying friends](. - India has [a burning need](for renewable energy. - [Making abortion pills easier to obtain]( is more essential than ever. Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee The whisper in the oil market is that Russia is currently producing fewer than 9.5 million barrels a day, down from 11.1 million barrels in February. Sanctions introduced after the invasion of Ukraine are starting to bite. But there’s a risk that Vladimir Putin will retaliate with an oil-for-friends initiative, selling discounted crude to replace unwilling buyers with newfound friends. The European Union has been hesitant to introduce secondary sanctions to stop other countries and regions from buying Russian oil and subsidizing Putin’s war, but diplomats in Brussels acknowledge that cutting off Russia’s oil revenue, not just its flows, is essential to starving the country of dollars. It’s a tactic the U.S. employed successfully against Iran, and one that [the EU looks set to embrace](, albeit reluctantly, argues Javier Blas. The one-two punch of banning oil imports into Europe, and then [barring EU-based companies from facilitating Russian oil sales](to the likes of India and China, is designed to deliver “an economic knockout,” says Javier. “I believe that the U.S. and Europe will use tools akin to secondary sanctions, plus diplomatic pressure, to force Russian oil production down, rather than passively witness all the Russian oil they once bought going elsewhere.” Bonus Reading: Germany Can and Should [Stop Buying Russian Gas]( — The Editors  The next front in the Ukraine war will be [on the Black Sea]( — James Stavridis How to Buy Friends and Influence Oversight More than a dozen former U.S. regulators are now on the payrolls of Binance Exchange, Coinbase Global Inc. and other cryptocurrency boosters. Cybercrime cops in the U.K. have been lured to crypto firms with pay packages worth double or triple their civil-servant salaries. While the stock prices of cyber and tech stocks have declined in recent months, [“this is still an industry with deep pockets,”]( argues Lionel Laurent. The revolving door of regulators joining crypto firms plus the fear of missing out on a revolution in finance is a deadly combination, says Lionel. “Failing to enforce tougher oversight threatens harm to those least able to afford it.” Getting the balance right between allowing newfangled tech to bloom and regulating the industry to protect consumers is tricky, but essential. Hot, Hot, Hot The Indian government has ordered the nation’s electricity producers to run [coal-powered plants at full capacity]( to counter blackouts during a blistering heatwave. A surge in the cost of imported coal, the fossil fuel that accounts for more than 70% of the country’s electricity generation, has made utilities that depend on overseas supplies reluctant to take the financial hit of cranking up generators to meet increased demand. [The situation is unsustainable](, argues Mihir Sharma. Domestic coal, while plentiful, typically isn’t of sufficient quality for power plants to burn, and the infrastructure to supply utilities frequently fails to deliver. What the country needs is a more rapid switch to renewable energy sources. “India cannot keep relying on its hopelessly inefficient thermal power plant network,” Mihir argues. “Whatever else coal might provide India, it isn’t energy security.” Telltale Charts The Nasdaq 100 index, “crammed with the mega-cap tech stocks on which so many now rely,” endured a wild four days which saw it … well, it closed on Thursday [exactly where it opened on Monday](, says John Authers.  Further Reading The FDA should [scrap needless restrictions](on abortion pills — Lisa Jarvis Why Cathie Wood and Elon Musk are [wrong about index investing]( — Timothy L. O’Brien and Nir Kaissar The [Philippines economy is great]( — but only by the numbers — Dan Moss Singapore’s [tougher stay-at-home rules](for the superrich — Andy Mukherjee Why every business would benefit from hiring [granfluencers]( — Andrea Felsted ICYMI Ukraine’s [Eurovision Song Contest entry](unites the nation. [Elon Musk’s fixer]( is quietly tending the fortune of the world’s richest man. Bankers are quitting Wall Street to [seek their fortunes in crypto](. China orders state-owned firms to [dump their foreign computers](. Kickers NASA plans to [drive a spaceship into an asteroid]( to assess the feasibility of preventing future collisions with Earth. [500 kilos of cocaine]( worth more than $50 million found in coffee bags at Nespresso factory. Interrail has halved the price of its passes to celebrate [50 years of tickets offering unlimited European train travel]( (and yes, I was that callow teenager rolling into Geneva, thumbing through my European phrase book and wondering why there was no entry for the Swiss language). Notes: Please send bags of, ahem, coffee and complaints to Mark Gilbert at magilbert@bloomberg.net. [Sign up here]( and follow us on [Instagram](, [TikTok](, [Twitter]( and [Facebook](. Like getting this newsletter? [Subscribe to Bloomberg.com]( for unlimited access to trusted, data-driven journalism and subscriber-only insights. Before it’s here, it’s on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can’t find anywhere else. [Learn more](. You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Bloomberg Opinion Today newsletter. 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