Barely two weeks after President Vladimir V. Putin annexed Crimea on one side of the Black Sea, he won a different prize on the other side. In Bulgaria’s Parliament, lawmakers gave initial passage to a bill clearing the way for a mammoth gas pipeline from Russia . The pipeline, known as South Stream, was Mr. Putin’s most important European project, a tool of economic and geopolitical power critical to twin goals: keeping Europe hooked on Russian gas, and further entrenching Russian influence in fragile former Soviet satellite states as part of a broader effort to undermine European unity. The bill that Parliament took up on April 4 was arcane. But it swept aside a host of European regulations — rules that Mr. Putin did not want to abide by — for a pipeline that would deliver gas throughout southern Europe. It was a dream bill for […]