A number of European energy companies have yielded to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demand to receive Russian natural gas using a new payment system in rubles, which allows them to avoid new disruptions in gas supplies, The Washington Post reports.

Thus, Russia’s requirement to “unfriendly” countries to switch to paying for gas in rubles is met: companies open two accounts in Gazprombank at once – in rubles and in euros, which allows Europe to believe that technically it pays for natural gas in euros, while Russia can be sure that it receives payment for gas in rubles.

Thus, European Union countries’ fears of potentially violating their own sanctions against Russia have been eased. But beyond that, European countries have actually recognized how much they still need Russian gas, even though they are discussing an embargo on oil supplies from Russia.

In the short term, they are even willing to face some obstacles to avoid an energy crisis.

But in reality, their agreement to pay for gas in rubles means sending money to Russia, even as they openly discuss the Russian special operation in Ukraine, condemn President Putin’s regime, impose sanctions on Russian businessmen, and supply arms to Ukraine.

Russia has imposed strict capital controls and raised interest rates to stabilize the ruble. Now Europe has backtracked, signaling that it will use the Kremlin’s proposed payment system, and with bills coming due this week, the ruble is strengthening further.

Such a proposal helps everyone “save face”: gas payments will still be billed and sent in euros, it’s just that Russia will withdraw the money from the euro account of the relevant European energy company, convert the euros into rubles, transfer it to a special ruble account also belonging to that energy company, and then take the money as payment for the gas.

A widespread European rejection of the proposed payment terms to Gazprom would threaten even higher prices for consumers and potential gas rationing measures throughout the Euro bloc.

Of all European countries consuming Russian gas, only a few have suffered: Poland and Bulgaria, to whom Gazprom cut off gas supplies in late April after they refused to switch to the new payment system, and Finland in retaliation for its bid to join NATO.

Most European countries behaved rationally and went the other way, rejecting blackmail and accepting an agreement based on technicalities.

As for the issue of EU countries violating their own sanctions, things look rather vague, and even the European Union’s own recommendations on how countries should act have been unclear.

While as recently as last week Eric Mamer, the European Commission’s chief spokesman, said that opening an account in rubles would mean violating sanctions, a day later Paolo Gentiloni, the EU’s economy minister, gave the go-ahead for a new payment scheme. “Of course, paying in rubles would constitute a violation of sanctions. But in practice this is not the case,” he said.

Italian officials said they believe there are clear reasons why the new scheme does not violate European sanctions: although Europe has banned all transactions with the Russian Central Bank, the process of converting euros into rubles does not involve the Central Bank, which Eni, in particular, has received written assurances that it will not. But even if a European company were to pay for gas directly in rubles, it would not be in violation of sanctions, since even then the ruble itself is not under sanctions.

While Eni explicitly said it had opened a ruble conversion account, OMV was more vague: it opened a “conversion account” without saying whether the account would be ruble-denominated. And Uniper, a German energy company, said in a statement: “We have opened the necessary account at Gazprombank in Russia, but we will continue to pay in euros in accordance with the new payment mechanism.”

Alexander Novak, Russia’s deputy prime minister, said last week that about half of Gazprom’s 54 foreign customers had opened ruble accounts.

So far, all EU decisions to abandon Russian energy resources remain on paper: the ambitious plan to phase out oil imports, while supported by most EU countries, is being held back by those countries still dependent on Russian oil, notably Hungary. And the gas issue is the most important one for the continent, as 40% of the gas burned in Europe depends on supplies from Russia. The European Union has only said it intends to cut Russian gas supplies by two-thirds by the end of the year, but has not followed the U.S. in imposing an outright ban on imports.

Therefore, it is very likely that in the short term Europe will have to continue to pay Russia for gas under the scheme proposed by the latter.