Not even the Russians can deny what you’re saying in your question. It’s feckless to do any trade with Russia.
The sentence you quoted however is a misrepresentation of reality. Spain. Portugal, Belgium, Switzerland, Ireland, Malta, Norway, Sweden, Luxembourg, and a few others don’t import much or any gas from Russia, but certainly aren’t dependent on it. France, a relatively large importer, is a good example of how sensational media portray the dependence. France’s energy supply is over 70% fulfilled by their nuclear reactors, 20% renewables, less than 9% fossile. The latter includes gas, oil, and coal. Articles with maps showing gas dependence show France‘s gas consumption relies for 30% on Russia. What it doesn’t show it translates to less than 2% of France’s total energy demand.
Five of the largest importers/consumers of Russian gas in Europe are Germany, Italy, Ukraine, Belarus and Turkey. Yes, in some media, Turkey is a part of ‘Europe’ when the reliance of ‘EU‘ on Russian gas is covered.
The manner in which countries depend on it differs a lot too. Some need it for certain industries, some for most of their power plants, and many for heating and cooking. The latter are in some countries including NL (~15% of gas russian) a priority. That is, in case of shortage, the largest companies are cut off first, then medium and small, then private consumers. This means in case Russia stops sending gas, some businesses might go either green or bankrupt, economy will take a hit, but nothing near a qualification as “highly dependent“. Within the EU, “highly dependent” applies to Germany, Italy, and several countries in the east, as in former east bloc countries where till very recently the majority had a positive opinion on Russia. The baltic states, Hungary, Bulgaria, and a few others in the east get 50 to over 90% of gas from Russia.
The high dependence implies strong leverage, which makes it an even worse misrepresentation. It could have been used as leverage over those two fake states (I refuse to register the names in my brain) but given the current situation…
Some German government dude said they’ll end Russiand dependence in just a few years. Dutch expert says that’s not being truthful, it would take an energy transition of 20-30 years. Germany is phasing out nuclear power plants because Fukushima, other east european countries don’t want it because of Chernobyl. Next week the EU will present a new energy plan to reduce reliance on Russia. If Russia shuts down the pipes, so be it, but if they don’t, well, it’s starting to look like those who depend on Russian gas a lot should start looking for alternatives very fast.
It blows our neighbor Germany, because of Putin, is going to invest 100billion in military, money that should have gone into energy independence instead.
TLDR: If the article would say “Germany/Italy“ instead of “the europeans” or “former east bloc members kept sucking the tit of Russian gas too long instead of switching to renewables or getting over their fear of nuclear power” then yes sure. But formulated as it is now it’s like saying Asians eat dogs while that mostly applies to Chinese and South Koreans and in many cases is really just pork