Russia announced today (Friday) that in less than 24 hours Finland will be cut off from its natural gas supply to Moscow.
This is a few days after Helsinki's decision to apply for NATO membership.
In Finland, Russian warnings about the "military-technical" consequences of removing its long-standing neutral status vis-à-vis Moscow have been ignored.
As you may recall, Finland and Sweden have officially applied to become members of the Trans-Atlantic Defense Alliance following fears that their fate would be similar to that of Ukraine, which Putin invaded to prevent it from joining the alliance.
The official announcement of the shutdown was made by the Russian company Gazprom Export, and the technical reasons are that Helsinki refused to fulfill the Kremlin's demands to pay for the gas supply in rubles.
This demand is part of the fabric of pressure Putin has exerted on European countries in response to sanctions imposed on Russia in recent months as part of Western efforts to stop the Russian invasion.
Bulgaria and Poland, which refused to comply with the demand, were also recently cut off from Russian gas.
In the case of Finland, there will probably be no terrible economic impact on the country, as only 5% of the gas used by the country comes from Russian imports.
In addition, Finland and the United States have signed a temporary gas supply agreement.
Meanwhile, Putin held a media meeting yesterday with senior members of the National Security Council and warned that there are attempts by "state entities" to harm Russia through a cyber attack, and that it must act to upgrade their systems.
"We are making targeted attempts to harm the online resources of our infrastructure," Putin warned, emphasizing that these are targets that also include communications companies and financial institutions.
He said, "We have been declared a cyber war, but like sanctions, it has also failed."
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