European leaders blasted Russia's decision to cut natural gas shipments to Poland and Bulgaria as “blackmail,” saying the cutoff and the Kremlin's warning that it might cease shipments to other countries is a failed attempt to divide the West over its support for Ukraine.
Russia's move Wednesday to use its most essential export as leverage marked a dramatic escalation in the economic war of sanctions and countersanctions that has unfolded in parallel to the fighting on the battlefield.
