National Review: Breaking Russia’s Natural-Gas Chokehold

Over the past year, Western leaders have watched Russia’s aggression against Ukraine with mounting apprehension. Indeed, Moscow’s moves in Ukraine are deeply concerning. But Russia’s policies there should be understood for what they truly are: part of a broader and longer-running game in which the Kremlin seeks to combat what it sees as the gradual creep eastward of European liberalism.

In this effort, one of Russia’s trump cards has been energy. Moscow has used its virtual monopoly on European gas supplies to undermine the unity of the European Union, to weaken the economies of Russia’s peripheral states, and to siphon off billions of dollars in profits to a corrupt oligarchy. Now, however, an opportunity has emerged on the European Union’s eastern border to break the Kremlin’s corrosive energy grip.

Read the full article HERE.