Europe has reduced its reliance on Russian gas following the war in Ukraine, and its chief supplier Russia is mired in western sanctions. What does it mean for Russia? It has certainly changed the fortunes for American gas to be sold to Europe: as of 2023, the US had become the world’s top exporter of gas.

Sanctions against Russian energy, high cost fuel, heat waves and droughts all at once have raised the price of daily energy use to unprecedented levels and plunged large parts of the world into darkness.