Putin's plans to blackmail Europe over gas supply fail to ignite

The worst-case scenarios piled up over the summer months. Germany’s economic minister warned of “catastrophic” industrial shutdowns, fraying supply chains and mass unemployment.

- Philip Oltermann BERLIN

France’s president urged citizens to turn down the heating. Spain asked why countries that hadn’t got hooked on Russian gas should bail out neighbours who had lectured them about fiscal discipline in the past.

The former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev gleefully predicted that Europeans would be “freezing in their homes”. “The cold is coming soon,” he said, menacingly, in June.

But signs are becoming clearer that EU members have weathered a historic crisis. Within eight months of Russian troops setting foot on Ukrainian soil, the bloc of 27 European states replaced about 80% of the natural gas it used to draw through pipelines with Russia, by rapidly building up new infrastructure for liquid natural gas (LNG), finding creative ways to help each other, and pursuing energy-saving policies.