The abortive interruption of Russian natural gas supplies to Ukraine on January 1 was a humiliating diplomatic blunder. It was an unnecessary crisis, and one that Russia clumsily lost in the court of world public opinion. While Ukraine was threatened with a gas blockade, Russia was voluntarily submitting itself to a two-week information blockade. The entire country was given a holiday from January 1 to 10, with even the newspapers shuttered. The political class fled to their holidays in the sun, and none of the usual Kremlin spin-doctors were deployed to staunch the flood of Western criticism. The Russian case...