EU climate czar: Putin’s war accelerated green transition

By SAMUEL PETREQUIN
Associated Press

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union’s climate czar says Russian President Vladimir Putin unwittingly accelerated the EU’s green transition with his war in Ukraine. Frans Timmermans said Tuesday that the  the 27-nation bloc reduced its dependency on Russian fossil fuels and increasing its renewable energy use over the past year. Timmermans, the EU commissioner in charge of the European Green Deal, told The Associated Press in an interview that Putin underestimated the EU’s resilience when Moscow cut off most natural gas flows to Europe amid the war. He said of the Russian leader, “He’s been saying publicly that this winter Europeans would freeze and starve. … Well, we neither froze nor starved.”