Either way, things are looking bad for everybody caught in Russia's newly declared sphere of influence.
How long this new iron curtain will last depends in part on how soon the EU can get its act together to push forward a single market in an environment where, as one senior EU adviser said this week, the bloc "doesn't address this with a strategic view."
A reason for that, said Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform, is that "national energy champions" -- by which he means the likes of Eni and E.On -- have persuaded national governments to keep the European markets segregated.
Gazprom can help accelerate the progress to a single market by continuing to cut off gas supplies to paying customers. For lots of reasons, therefore, another bitter Russia-Ukraine gas dispute is the last thing Gazprom, as a business, needs.
Gazprom, though, is more than a business. It is also an arm of Russian foreign policy.
Journalists definitively lack of historical culture !
It was Mr Reagan who was speaking of the Druzjba pipe as " an iron rope which with Europeans will hang themselves " and not as the " iron curtain " !