I spoke with my former State Department colleague Ben Schmitt on August 12 about energy sanctions against Russia. We reviewed how Germany had willfully made itself more dependent on Russian energy through a misguided policy of "change through trade." We discussed the outlook for Europe's efforts to rapidly wean itself off Russian oil and gas. While in the near term, Russia is finding alternative markets for its oil in China and India, medium and longer term trends resulting from energy sanctions spell peril for the Russian oil and gas industry.