The annual winter pantomime time is upon us. Once again, the malevolent Russian bear – also know as Gazprom – has turned off the gas taps supplying its feckless and debt-laden neighbour, Ukraine, because its former vassal will not pay a 40 per cent price rise.

The danger is that the rest of Europe will rapidly get sucked into the dispute, because European Union members rely on Russia for 25 per cent of their natural gas supplies, and about 80 per cent of that is delivered in transit through Ukraine.