Russia's squeeze on Europe only exacerbates its energy crunch. Lawyers are not the solution and only obscure the greater challenge for Brussels.
The faux political entity known as the European Union has a solution explained in today's Moscow Times headline: EU Warns of Legal Action Over Gas.
Send in the lawyers!
While Europe only gets one-quarter of its energy from Russia, 80% flows through the Ukraine transit point and strained Moscow-Kiev relations are affecting the EU states downstream. For a second day, no resolution between the two states was in sight.
France24 reports Austria, Czech Republic and Slovakia joined the list of EU states without gas supplies.
A similar dispute last year - curiously in the blustery cold European winter - possibly revolves around more of a showdown between oligarchs in Kiev and Moscow more than a political spat between suspicious neighbors Ukraine and Russia.
Beyond brinkmanship, the European Union's increasing energy thirst and declining energy supplies are longer term issues gnawing away at the faux union.
It is not a legal issue. It's a political issue which threatens to tear asunder the bureaucratic patchwork otherwise known as the European Union.
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