Vladimir Putin has suggested that Russia could stop supplying gas to the European Union before Brussels completes its own legal phase-out of Russian imports, using the disruption caused by the war involving Iran to argue that Moscow may find better-paying markets elsewhere.
The remarks mark a renewed attempt by the Kremlin to use energy as political leverage at a moment when volatility in the Middle East has pushed gas prices sharply higher.
Speaking to Kremlin journalist Pavel Zarubin, Putin said the EU was preparing new restrictions on Russian gas and liquefied natural gas, and that Russia might decide it was more profitable to leave the European market immediately and move volumes to other destinations. According to a Kremlin, he said this was not yet a formal decision but “thinking out loud”, adding that he would instruct the Russian government and energy companies to examine the issue. He also argued that, if buyers are prepared to pay a premium because of the Middle East crisis, suppliers will naturally shift to those markets.
The timing of the intervention is significant. Energy markets have been shaken by the conflict centred on Iran, which has disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and affected regional oil and LNG flows. Europe’s benchmark front-month gas contract at the Dutch TTF hub reached a three-year high of €65.79 per megawatt hour during trading on 3 March, more than double the level of the previous week. Analysts have also warned that Asia and Europe are especially exposed to any prolonged interruption in LNG traffic through Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of global LNG normally passes.
Putin is therefore speaking into a market already on edge. He linked rising energy prices to what he called aggression against Iran, and claimed that American suppliers would leave Europe as soon as higher-priced opportunities emerged elsewhere. That argument appears intended to reinforce a familiar Kremlin message: that Europe’s attempt to reduce dependence on Russian energy will leave it more vulnerable, not less. Yet the EU’s official position remains that, despite the price spike, there is no immediate threat to physical supply. The European Commission told member states this week that it was monitoring the situation closely but was not planning emergency measures for now.
Brussels, however, has reason to watch prices carefully. High prices could make it harder for member states to refill storage ahead of winter. Reuters reported that EU gas storage is around 30 per cent full, roughly nine percentage points below the level seen at the same time last year. Under EU rules, countries are required to fill storage sites to 90 per cent capacity by November. The concern in Brussels is not an immediate shortage, but that sustained price pressure could complicate procurement and raise costs for households and industry alike.
Against that background, Putin’s remarks are best understood as a political signal rather than a concrete commercial decision. The EU has already turned its phase-out plan into law. According to the Council of the EU and the European Commission, Russian LNG and pipeline gas imports are being prohibited in stages under Regulation EU/261/2026. For short-term contracts, the ban applies from 25 April 2026 for LNG and 17 June 2026 for pipeline gas. For long-term contracts, Russian LNG imports end on 1 January 2027, while pipeline gas imports are to stop on 30 September 2027, with a possible extension to 1 November 2027 if a member state faces difficulty meeting storage targets before winter.
That timetable matters because it shows the Kremlin is reacting to a process already well advanced. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Europe has sharply reduced its reliance on Russian energy. The Commission says the EU’s dependency on Russian gas has fallen from 45 per cent of imports at the start of the war to 12 per cent in 2025. Reuters reports that Russia’s place in much of the European market has been taken by Norway, the United States and Algeria. Moscow still retains some customers, notably Hungary and Slovakia, but the broader European market on which Gazprom once depended has largely been lost.
For that reason, Putin’s threat may say as much about Russia’s weakened position as about Europe’s vulnerability. The Kremlin is seeking to exploit a moment of global uncertainty to suggest that Europe could once again pay a price for trying to sever energy ties with Russia. But the legal framework for ending those imports is already in place, and Brussels has so far shown no sign of reversing course. The more immediate effect of the Iran war is not to restore Russia’s old energy dominance in Europe, but to underline how quickly geopolitical conflict can still move prices — and how determined Moscow remains to convert that volatility into political pressure.
