Europe can't just "pay above premium prices" to replace Russian gas. It would have been physically impossible to replace the Russian gas (and it still is physic

Europe can't just "pay above premium prices" to replace Russian gas. It would have been physically impossible to replace the Russian gas (and it still is physically impossible to fully replace Russian gas within 2022) without creating a tremendous amount of infrastructure around getting LNG, which European countries have been incredibly successful at doing so. The progress they've made in creating that infrastructure is beyond what basically anyone would have predicted at the start of the war.