DISINFO: Russia is not using energy as a political weapon
SUMMARY
Moscow has always been meeting its commitments as far as it concerns deliveries of natural gas to Europe and has never used its energy resources as a political weapon or as a coercion tool. It is actually the United States which are using sanctions to derail commercial energy projects.
RESPONSE
This story is part of a repeated pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative, lately related more specifically to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
The report is using a statement made by the White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan during his trip to Europe when he said, commenting about the energy prices' rise that "Russia has a history of using energy as a tool of coercion, as a political weapon. Whether that's what's happening here now is something I will leave to others".
The Kremlin’s use of energy coercion has been solidly corroborated. Russian energy companies, presumably with the Kremlin’s blessing, have made multiple attempts over the past 30 years to use energy supplies to advance Moscow’s strategic priorities. Events in Ukraine both in 2009 and in 2014 are two cases in point, while another example can be observed in Lithuania. Russia has a long track record of using gas export to Belarus as a political tool.
More cases concerning European energy issues including Europe catastrophically lacks gas; the US wants to completely capture the European gas market and the US would like to resell Russian gas to Europe.