Europe Gas Crisis Hands Putin a Birthday Gift

Vladimir Putin is 69 today and the German-speaking former KGB agent is enjoying some birthday schadenfreude over Europe’s gas crisis.

An “erroneous” push by European Union officials for spot-market gas trading over the long-term contracts Russia favors is partly to blame for soaring prices, the Russian president declared yesterday. “It was very difficult to talk with the so-called experts, because they do it with a certain amount of snobbery,” he said.