A Region at a Turning Point in History

For nearly a year, the wider Central, Eastern, Northern and Southern European region has been struggling with an energy crisis and economic crisis. It followed the start of Russia's full-scale aggression against Ukraine on 24 February 2022, however Russian President Vladimir Putin had already been implementing his hostile energy policy towards the West since autumn 2021, with the aim of testing energy as a potential tool of war, e.g. by artificially restricting supplies with the effect of driving up commodity prices.