Does that work for the EU situation? Russia had already denied to supply the required amounts of gas before the sabotage happened...

Russia had suspect excuses for those cuts as well. Never once did they say “we’re shutting this off because fuck you”. They always left room for diplomatic deniability.

Fair enough.

Deniability and blackmail are at odds with each other.

Yeah it’s not blackmail, it’s coercion.

What's the distinction? I'm going with the term used in the wiki link.