On top of all that comes the insult of Russian President Vladimir Putin not being invited along with European leaders to attend the 70^th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. More on that in a while.

But first on the issue of natural exports. Russia this week finally responded to the Kiev regime’s incorrigible banditry by giving notice that it is to cut off all gas supplies that transit through Ukraine – which make up about 40-50 per cent of the EU’s supply. In the middle of winter and with temperatures plummeting the move by Russian state-owned Gazprom has reportedly sent Brussels officials into panic mode.

No doubt the dutiful Western corporate media will crank up the «Putin as arch villain» narrative. Families freezing across Europe will be attributed to the «evil genius» of the «Soviet mastermind».

Maros Sefcovic, European Commission vice president for energy, said the decision by Gazprom to turn off the gas taps will damage Russia’s reputation as an international supplier. His admonition echoes earlier calls by Europe’s energy commissioner Gunther Oettinger who appealed to Russia not to «politicise» energy trade.

That’s ironic humour for you. Russia has not politicised anything; it is the Brussels bureaucracy, along with their American cohorts, who have sought to politicise everything – and to give Moscow impossible room for manoeuvre.

Gazprom’s chief executive Alexei Miller this week reminded international media that Russia has been a reliable supplier of natural gas to Europe for the past four decades – even during the West’s aggressive Cold War.

Besides, the objective of Russia’s latest gas cut-off is not to end the trade with Europe. Russia is planning to route future supplies to the EU through Turkey. As Miller pointed out, it is up to the EU to now build the necessary infrastructure to take the gas supplies from the Turkish border into Greece and beyond.

Russia’s objective is simply this: to put an end to the Kiev regime’s de facto theft of Russian gas exports to Europe. How much more reasonable can that be?

We can imagine how Britain would react if Scotland decided to with-hold North Sea oil supplies transiting its territory. Or how France would respond if its wine exports were being hijacked en route by some third party. Or the US if Mexico were found to be surreptitiously dipping into its exports to the rest of South America.

It’s an absurd complaint by EU officials and governments to now accuse Russia of «energy blackmail». After all, it was Brussels that put the kibosh on Russia’s South Stream gas project via the Black Sea last year, thus, in effect, squeezing Russia to fall back on the Ukrainian transit route. That route has, as noted, become infeasible due to the Kiev regime’s incessant and illegal siphoning off of Russian exports.

So what does the EU want Russia to do? Keep giving gas handouts to the Kiev mafia-regime that refuses to pay for its own gas supplies and which is bombing and killing ethnic Russians in the eastern Ukrainian regions?

Russia has every right to take measures to protect its vital economic interests. An alternative pipeline through Turkey will provide a southern arc complimentary to the existing Nord Stream Russian gas supply route via the Baltic Sea into Germany. It is therefore ridiculous to accuse Russia of cutting off gas supplies to the EU. Russia is merely cutting off illegal interference in its exports by a third party – the Kiev Reich.

Admittedly, entailed is a critical supply problem this winter for the EU until the Turkish route is implemented. But that’s not Russia’s problem; it is Brussels’ problem for having blocked the construction of the South Stream project and for its relentless indulgence of the Kiev regime, with all its criminality.

In any case, complaints from the EU that Russia is damaging its reputation as an international energy supplier ring hollow. Russia has found a ready alternative market for its gas exports with China after Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping signed a $400 billion record deal last year. The Asian market for Russia’s prodigious energy resources is projected to overshadow the EU market. Moreover, the Moscow-Beijing partnership is to be financed with roubles and yen, which relieves Russia and China of artificial dependence on the US dollar or Euro.

It seems the height of European conceit to lecture Russia about trade ethics, when the former has imposed a gratuitous embargo on Moscow over baseless accusations of interfering in Ukraine. It is the EU elite and their Washington ally who have been systematically interfering in Ukraine and provoking a war of aggression on the eastern regions – with a death toll of nearly 5,000 over the past year and up to one million refugees. If international law and morality were adhered to, it is Brussels and Washington that should be sanctioned, if not prosecuted for the criminality they have unleashed in the form of the Kiev regime.

Europe’s hypocrisy and double think are underscored with France’s ongoing unilateral abrogation of the deal it had with Russia for the supply of two warships. Russia has paid France over $1 billion already for the delivery of the Mistral class vessels; yet Paris refuses to honour the contract. A less polite but not inaccurate way to describe this French misconduct is state-sponsored «piracy».

Washington is reportedly breathing down the French government’s neck to not relent on its shameless scuppering of the Russian Mistral contract. Which makes the damage to French «reputation» all the more injurious. Not only is France not be trusted as an international trading partner; its «sovereign independence» is also evidently at the mercy of Washington’s bullying. How can anyone trust the French government to honour anything in the light of this craven kowtowing?

But here’s the coup de grace for European insolence towards Russia: French President Francois Hollande and his German counterpart Joachim Gauck will be among other European leaders to attend the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz later this month. The ceremony will be led by Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski.

An official invitation was reportedly not sent to Moscow, and Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said this week that the Russian president would not be attending the Auschwitz event, as a result.

In January 1945, it was the Russian Red Army that liberated the death camp – which has since come to symbolise the crimes of Nazi Germany and European fascism generally. Russian troops liberated thousands of Poles, Jews and other European nationals from imminent death at Auschwitz, where over one million had already perished. The French Vichy regime collaborated with Nazi Germany to send hundreds of thousands to their death at Auschwitz and other extermination centres.

Seventy years on, Russia is being snubbed over perhaps its most heroic contribution to Europe – the defeat of fascist Germany and its mass extermination programs.

It is astounding how relatively quickly European history is in effect being re-written – and by countries that were perpetrators of the horrors of World War II.

But should we be surprised? Russia saved Europe’s neck from fascism and continues to save Europe’s neck from freezing every winter with its natural gas supplies. And yet for all this, Russia has to endure insults and provocations from a thankless European elite.

It’s time that there were consequences for such hideous, purblind European arrogance. Russia can legitimately take her generous bounties elsewhere in the world – and let the incorrigible ingrates freeze if they want to!

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Finian Cunningham, originally from Belfast, Ireland is a prominent expert in international affairs. The author and media commentator was expelled from Bahrain in June 2011 for his critical journalism in which he highlighted human rights violations by the Western-backed regime. For many years, he worked as an editor and writer in the mainstream news media, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. He is now based in East Africa where he is writing a book on Bahrain and the Arab Spring.