For months of skyrocketing prices we were gaslighted by the "it's underinvestment in fossil fuels, it's the fault of wind energy" narrative while Russia was deliberately undersupplying the EU and leaving Gazprom storage facilities in Europe empty as a preparation for war.
When Fatih Birol pointed at the anomaly of Gazprom's commercial behaviour, loads of media and expert reacted like "leave Russia alone, it's all about your silly climate scenario"
It was certainly possible to debate whether Russia was motivated by technical, commercial or political behaviour (I had tried to do it in this old thread).By abiding by existing contracts, Russia skilfully remained within the realm of plausible deniability
https://twitter.com/MarcoGiuli/status/1482740749980606465
But I guess right now it is extremely difficult not to link the unusual Gazprom's commercial practice of last months - especially the low storage issue - to the events unfolding right now. How?
Tentative answer:Russia calculated that a high bills environment would have limited European leaders' options for retaliation measures implying inflationary effects. The Kremlin weaponised households bills while we were all busy expecting them to weaponise pipelines
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