To be honest, if European countries don't want to freeze to death then they inevitably have to obey the rules set by Putin. This step actually looks cruel but I see this is the last step from Putin to escape the sanctions imposed on Russia.
Yeah right, the same bullsihit about freezing to death without Russian gas.
I wonder how did we manage before when the USSR was not selling one cubic meter of gas to the western world, oh wait, what happened afterward? One crumbled and the other was perfectly fine!
In 2019, natural gas accounted for 32% of the EU final energy consumption in households, electricity for 25%, renewables for 20% and petroleum products for 12%.The main use of energy by households in the EU in 2019 was for heating their homes (64% of final energy consumption in the residential sector), with renewables accounting for more than a quarter (28%) of EU household's space heating consumption.
So split that by 40% as that's how much gas we import from Russia and we have something like 32% of 40%.
How please do tell us how we're all going to freeze to death from a 12% cut in gas used in households.
Besides, with heating you can always use something else, good luck eating tree bark once you don't have anything else to sell other than mail order brides.
As far as China and India is concerned, i think Russia is still in good business with their energy sells.
And how are they going to do so? By fueling balloons and sending them over the border? Carrying oil in their pockets?
Suddenly Russia will be able to export 75% of the gas over inexistent pipelines but Europe can't replace 40% of theirs.