Over at the FT Brussels Blog, Tony Barber points to a news conference held last week between Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the press corps, in which Russia’s invokes repeated references to Ukrainian food and drink in order to make his point about European bureaucracy (suggesting that they will probably just sit around drinking).

The discussion, which centres on the shut-off of Russian gas deliveries to the European Union via Ukraine, turns at one point to the possible deployment of EU monitors along the pipeline route through Ukrainian territory. “We hope that the issue will be resolved expeditiously. We don’t want a group of men and women to come to Kiev and just sit in a hotel and sip horilka [Ukrainian vodka],” Putin says. (…)