It is Putin's economic madness to invade Ukraine.

Russia is not an economic superpower like the United States or China.

Industry and business are not very developed. 

But natural resources are extensive, and Russia is the world's second largest oil producer.

Depending on exports

Russia is thus dependent on export revenues from oil and gas.

If the rest of the world were to isolate Russia completely economically through sanctions, shut down the entire Russian financial system and stop buying oil and gas, it would - purely economically - be the worst for Russia.

This is shown not least by the fact that the Moscow Stock Exchange plummeted by a maximum of 46 percent this morning after the invasion.

Other countries' stock markets have only fallen a few percent.

Now tougher sanctions await than ever from the EU, said the President of the European Commission on Thursday morning.

Russian assets in the EU will be frozen.

Russian banks will not have access to the EU financial market.

Sanctions will also be imposed on individual sectors of the Russian economy.

Tonight, EU leaders will meet to discuss and decide how far-reaching the sanctions will be.

The natural gas weapon

If Russia were not even allowed to export oil anymore, of course the price of oil would rise even more than it has already done, as would the price of petrol.

But oil can be pumped up in many parts of the world and is easy to transport.

However, there is one problem that is becoming much more difficult to deal with: the gas.

The EU has become heavily dependent on natural gas.

Among other things, since Germany decided to get rid of nuclear power and use gas, which admittedly emits carbon dioxide, but significantly less than coal, as a transitional solution on the way to the goal of zero emissions.

The EU gets 40 percent of its gas from Russia.

The gas is transported in pipelines.

That is why Germany has not previously wanted to stop the North Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia.

Now Germany did it anyway yesterday.

But if Russian gas were to be banned with sanctions, there would be energy chaos in Europe.

In Germany, therefore, a simultaneous decommissioning of both nuclear power and coal is underway.

As electricity demand increases, so do petrol and diesel.

Lack of energy threatens

The other side of this is, of course, that Putin himself could choke the gas to Europe.

This would create a very difficult situation for Germany and several countries in Eastern Europe: It is not possible to replace everything with liquefied natural gas from the USA and the Middle East.

There would be a severe lack of energy.

Electricity prices would probably skyrocket much more than oil prices.

It may be that Putin coldly expects the EU to not want to be part of it in the end.

And that all future sanctions and total disaster for the Russian economy are a price worth paying to subjugate Ukraine, under threat of stifling gas supplies if other countries intervene.

It's pure speculation, I really have no idea, as little as anyone else.

But that all rationality, not least economic one, seems to be blown away, is not only scary but also a very big problem for anyone trying to navigate right now.

This applies to everything from security policy decisions to guesses about stock market and currency developments.