The reaction to the cancellation of the Sound Stream project has been a wonder to behold and needs to be explained very carefully.
In order to understand what has happened it is first necessary to go back to the way Russian-European relations were developing in the 1990s.
Briefly, at that period, the assumption was that Russia would become the great supplier of energy and raw materials to Europe. This was the period of Europe's great “rush for gas” as the Europeans looked forward to unlimited and unending Russian supplies. It was the increase in the role of Russian gas in the European energy mix which made it possible for Europe to run down its coal industry and cut its carbon emissions and bully and lecture everyone else to do the same.
