Putin's political calculation, everybody seems to say, is that this type of energy crisis is going to cause political unrest, which then redounds toward the benefit of European right-wing parties that are more sympathetic to Russia. Are you starting to see significant protests? Is that panning out for Putin?

No, I think it is not at this point. The pain has not been felt by ordinary citizens except at the gas pump and in their electric bills. So far, they are willing to bear that pain in solidarity with Ukraine, which enjoys fairly substantial support across Europe. In Italy, where, as you know, a far-right government was just elected on Sunday, the leader of that new government, the likely leader, George Molloney, is surprisingly staunchly pro-Ukraine. So if Putin's calculation was that the precipitating of a crisis over Ukraine would drive the far-right into overt pro-Russian stance, it looks like it is not going to pan out. Of course, that could all change if things get really bad during the winter. People are willing to pay higher gas prices. It's not clear how willing they'll be to freeze to death or suffer substantial discomfort during the winter. But all that is still speculative.

So where did Molloney draw her support?

Well, in the four years since the last election, she's been steadily increasing her support. Essentially, it came from the other two right-wing parties, which will now be her coalition partners, the so-called Lega, or League, which used to be the Lombard League and then the Northern League, led by Matteo Salvini and Berlusconi's party, Fort Sertitalia, which has been declining for a number of years. The overall total of votes for right-wing parties did not increase, but Molloney increased her share of that vote from about 4.4% in 2018 to over 27% this year. So a substantial increase in her vote, which has come about because she's not only taken a strong anti-immigration stance, which Matteo Salvini also did, but took a very strong pro-family anti-abortion, anti-homosexual anti-gay rights, anti-gender transformation, what have you, very right-wing position on a whole range of social issues, which seem to have appealed to the electorate. On the left, Enrico Let refused to enter into an alliance with what's called the Five Star Movement, which was founded by a TV comedian that they grew many years ago. But the movement since then passed into the hands of Giuseppe Colte, who was Prime Minister before Mario Draghi, the outgoing Prime Minister. The decision by Colte to withdraw his support from the Pro-Druggi Coalition, which included all the parties except Melonius, led to a split on the left, and Enrico Leta refused to ally his social democratic party, which is called the Pactito-Cratico, or Democratic Party, with the Five Star Movement, which itself had an internal factional split. I don't know how much of the tell you want to go into Italian politics, which is always comically factionalized.