ukraine war
The chief purpose of the Western sanctions against Russia, after Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, has been to stop Russia's sales of energy — mainly pipelined Russian gas — to Europe. Russia had been the top supplier of energy to Europe, because its energy was by far the cheapest in Europe. It was the least expensive to produce and sell to Europe, largely because it was pipelined into Europe whereas other suppliers needed to containerize and ship their gas and oil to Europe — which is far costlier to do. In all of Europe, virtually the only energy that is pipelined comes from Russia. Therefore, the sanctions that prohibited Russian energy to be supplied to Europe caused energy-prices in Europe to soar.

However, Western 'news'-media don't blame the sanctions for Europe's soaring energy-prices, because those sanctions come from the U.S. and have the cooperation and participation by European governments. Here are the main 'causes' of Europe's soaring energy-prices according to U.S.-and-allied 'news'-media (and you will see examples from Western Governments and 'news'-media there simply by clicking onto each one of these phrases, each one of which is linked):

"Russia's cutting off the gas to Europe"

"Russia strangling Europe"

"Russia's energy war"

"Putin's energy weapon"

So: each of those 'news'-media is routinely lying to their audience in order to place the blame for Europe's soaring fuel-prices upon the Government of Russia, instead of upon the Government of America and upon its various vassal-Governments in Europe that constitute together the EU.

In addition to using those lying phrases, U.S.-and-allied 'news'-media use distractionary and misleading 'explanations' of the soaring prices. For example, the American and German-owned Politico 'news'-site headlined "Why cheap US gas costs a fortune in Europe", and 'explained' that "The liquefied natural gas (LNG) loaded on to tankers at U.S. ports costs nearly four times more on the other side of the Atlantic, largely due to the market disruption caused by a near-total loss of Russian deliveries following the invasion of Ukraine." What caused that "near-total loss of Russian deliveries" isn't so much as even discussed in their 'news-report', and the word or even concept of "sanction" doesn't even appear once in the article. That's how propaganda — NOT news — is done. Their 'news'-report instead discusses whether the U.S. suppliers, or instead the European middlemen to whom they sell American liquefied natural gas, is to blame, but, of course, all such discussion is distractionary, instead of at all explanatory, of the question "Why cheap US gas costs a fortune in Europe". This is the way to deceive Europeans into re-electing their politicians who serve U.S. billionaires instead of European consumers.

A comedic, but also extremely informative, documentation of the absurd extent to which U.S.-and-allied Governments and media go in order to pretend that these cut-offs of Europe's least-costly energy are due to Russia instead of to the U.S. can be seen in the 8-minute video by Matt Orfalea, "Who Blew Up Nord Stream Pipelines? | A Mystery!"

To see some of the many OTHER tricks that U.S.-and-allied 'news'-media use in order to deceive Europeans to vote for the politicians in these U.S.-vassal-nations (propagandistically called U.S. 'allies', instead), I have provided many more examples in my prior "Debunking Lies About the War in Ukraine". That article, combined with this one, presents a fully documented (in the links) and comprehensive picture of European Governments as serving U.S. billionaires instead of European consumers. If what it says is true — and you can easily decide that for yourself by clicking onto any link anywhere that you doubt what is being alleged there — then you will know that your Government doesn't care about you, at all, and is instead serving America's billionaires, at your considerable expense.

In order to keep those U.S.-and-'allied' weapons flowing to Ukraine so that America can defeat Russia in the battlefield of Ukraine by using Ukraine's army instead of America's soldiers, the lies that have been documented here need to be believed by Europeans — and they are (or at least have been) believed by Europeans. The tricks have been working, thus far.