Strange. Why should one need to "counter" the Russians?
Cooperation should still be in the repertoire of foreign policy.

The Russians/Gazprom do now EXACTLY what a rational economist in charge would do:
1) Don't give your goods away to someone who didn't buy them.
2) Don't sell your goods at a tiny fraction of their worth.

The Eastern European non-NATO nations got natural gas for a half or less of the price charged on the Western Europeans. The Ukraine did not negotiate a new contract that satisfied the Russians in time, so they didn't get any deliveries any more. It needs no evil plan for this; rational economic behavior is enough explanation.

It's understandable that Russia subsidizes close friends like Belarus, but there's no reason for subsidizing Ukraine, a nation that has a Russian minority that's a regional majority in some places and doesn't want to talk about this.

The(first) article is about a small great power game; such things happen all the time in our world and our governments aren't exactly role models for fairness either.

By the way; the U.S.Americans and the British have in my opinion still no right to criticize Russia for its comparably civil great power games. Great powers who waged a war of aggression should better wait for a decade or two till they criticize others' great power games.
The Russians pursue their interests with great rationality and demonstrated the ability to limit their aims to what's easily achievable. That's a great situation for cooperation. Most of their national interests are justifiable - security against invasion in general and advance of a nearby foreign alliance, for example.
Putin knows about the limits of Russia's abilities (unlike the USA and UK) and this limits the problems that he creates.

We can fall back to containment strategies once Russia recovered as state, society and military from the downfall of the 90's and the sins of the 70's.