It seems that the last US Congress proposed sanctions against Russia for interfering in the US elections and annexation of Crimea will have quite larger and not expected impact on global picture and alliances.
From 2014, when Crimea, former part of Ukraine, was annexed to the Russian Federation, European Union and USA has mutually decided to sanction Russia financial and industrial interest in order to force Russia to not really know or unrealistic target, like restitution of Crimea to Ukraina. I will not argue about the referendum which took place in Crimea for the annexation to Russia, but for sure is unrealistic to think that Russia will return Crimea, nowadays part of Russian Federation and part of a strong and modern military system of Russia, to Ukraine. No one has even considered to request to Russia to pay a relevant amount to Ukraine for Crimea. Yes,..... there are moral issues, but by the end would be more realistic than what was done until today.
With the last proposed sanctions approved by US Congress and waiting the President Trump signature, the European Union is starting to argue the US policy which is harming European Union energetic sector, impeding to construct or enlarge the natural gas pipeline from Russia to Europe.
Hard to understand which are the real arguments for the last proposal of US Congress, but seems that, if passed, will harm the only historical alliance on which was based the policy of the modern world (good and bad), the USA-EU ax.
The EU is preparing to act not in agreement with US policy arguing that EU has to follow it´s own interest, which are not the US anymore. And all is not about military, Crimea, big policy issue, but and only just natural gas and exporting again on russian market.
The EU is receiving 1/3 of its natural gas needs from Russia and cutting this pipeline and sanctioning the companies which are involved in building the new pipeline from Russia to Germany, the North Stream 2 (EU), by the US Congress proposal will lead to oblige EU to purchase more expensive natural gas from another big player, Qatar, which is really not close to Europe at all.
But as I already wrote about in a former story on Steemit, Qatar is actually facing other big problems with neighbors like Saudi Arabia, UAE etc.. and so the price of natural gas will just increase over and over.
https://steemit.com/news/@gladman/will-be-qatar-the-next-victim-of-arab-spring
With this picture and these facts, the big issue is that EU will probably not follow the US proposal and will start to search a way to dismiss the EU sanctions against Russia, forgetting the Crimea issue, without any achievement, but the natural gas and the possibility of exporting again a lot of European products on the Russian market will be more important than the main point for which the EU sanctions were installed at the time.
And this not far ago was called : Realpolitik and the winner in this case would be Russia, sanctioned, but after 3 years exiting from sanction without big issues, having reorganized the internal agriculture market, relevant part of financial market and having split the big alliance between US and EU. The "collateral damage": the poor people of Ukraine, which after all has not solved any of the open problems and the country has really relevant financial problems, having in the meantime cut all the relation with Russia, with the mineral resources in the east of the country and having not been accepted in EU as member.