Putin wants the West to defeat the purpose of its own sanctions

Vladimir Putin is insisting that 48 “hostile nations“—the US, the UK, and the EU’s members among them—pay for Russian gas in rubles. The demand is more than provocation; it’s a strategy to force the West to dilute the effects of its own sanctions on Moscow.

In 2021, these hostile nations paid roughly $69 billion for gas from Gasprom, the Russian state-owned company. To make a similar scale of payments this year, countries will have to procure around 6-7 trillion rubles. In a meeting with officials on Mar. 23, Putin told the Central Bank of...