Winter is coming, and Putin feels sorry for us again

Winter is coming, and Putin has pulled out his well-worn weapon of gas-scaremongering, loading it with the usual rounds: Europe will freeze, businesses will go under, families will weep over their heating bills if they still refuse to buy from Moscow. At Tuesday's gas forum in Moscow, the Russian president once again cast a worried eye on the future of European households, since he evidently finds it hard to bear that we don't want to pay for the next installment of the war against Ukraine along with our utility bills. Not that he necessarily needs us anyway, seeing as he's already planning Arctic business ventures with American companies—but apparently we still matter enough for him to personally warn us that it will cost us dearly if we don't leave our money with him instead.

This kind of concern may ring a bell from 2022, when Russian propaganda already wrote the obituary once for a Europe left without Russian gas. In RT's Christmas video, a European family first generated electricity for their Christmas lights using the running wheel of their daughter's gift hamster, and by the imagined holiday the following year, the little pet itself had ended up in the soup. With the story of a family spooning soup in a freezing apartment, they wanted to hammer home the idea that standing up to Russia is a straight path to darkness, hunger and Christmas hamster stew—which, of course, a few properly addressed gas bills could still prevent in time. The film, moreover, was distributed by RT itself, meaning the hamster's culinary career was managed by the state propaganda machine.

By contrast, this summer the lines snaking around for fuel had to be dodged in the very country that, according to its own advertising, could supply the whole of Europe with energy. In great Russia, which so readily casts itself as the world's gas station, several regions saw fuel shortages, purchase restrictions and rising prices making life harder for drivers; in August, Reuters correspondents saw long lines both in Moscow and the surrounding area, while Rosneft limited gasoline sales to thirty liters per car. The empire that envisions the demise of European hamsters turned out to be somewhat less omnipotent at its own gas stations.

Putin now sought to illuminate Europeans' supposed foolishness with the proverb that whoever digs a pit for others falls into it themselves—a particularly fitting choice of words from the leader of a state whose war has led Ukrainian drones to strike Russian refineries, with Russian drivers themselves feeling the effects of the resulting production shortfalls. According to a September analysis by Poland's Centre for Eastern Studies, the fuel shortage that worsened again in August was driven precisely by attacks on refineries, which were followed by further restrictions and rising gasoline prices. It seems the folk wisdom about digging pits would have been worth discussing in the Kremlin before the invasion was ordered—but let's face it, Putin's people didn't manage that.

Europe's energy supply does come with costs and difficulties, but for years Putin has kept wrapping the same offer in a veneer of sympathy: keep paying him, or else we'll regret it. Now he even adds that other buyers are already lining up, that deals can be struck with American partners too, so he really has no reason to insist on us—while in the same breath devoting another speech to why we should still buy from him anyway. Such selflessness is touching, especially coming from a man so worried about the temperature of European living rooms while his own army is busy making sure people in Ukraine are left without heating.

Opinion