“Putin has been, after all, an incredibly cruel bully over his energy empire. I can supply you with tons of links about this...”
Post your links.
And this is a case in point. Remember when he bombed Georgia? He wanted no reprisal for it and threatened to cut off heat to anyone who didn't like it.
"Gas provides a tempting form of leverage, and Russia had already used it against Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania and Moldova. But when Gazprom, the Russian state gas monopoly, followed Putin's instructions to turn off the spigot to Ukraine, Russia crossed a new threshold."