An air of unreality hung over events as Russian national television suspended normal programming on New Year’s day to show live pictures of technicians turning down the flow of natural gas to Ukraine at a compressor station near the Russian border.

Few believed Russia would carry out its threat, on the day it assumed the rotating presidency of the Group of Eight industrialised nations with a pledge to make “energy security” a key theme. The Russia-Ukraine gas trading relationship is, after all, the second largest in the world after Canada-US.