BRUSSELS—Europe is starting to play hardball with Russia on energy — and the Kremlin is fighting back. For years, the European Union was highly dependent on Russia’s natural gas and was unable to exert any influence on its supplier since it is the world’s largest energy importer. This spring, the European Commission launched an EU Energy Union to finally bind the 28 countries into a single energy market.
The three Baltic States — previously linked only to each other and to Russia — have been instrumental to this new era of EU energy policy. Last December, Lithuania leased a floating liquefied …read more