Second, Yamal’s completion signaled a small Kremlin victory over Washington — the majority owner of the plant is Novatek, which is one of the energy companies hit by the 2014 financial sanctions over Russia’s actions in Ukraine. While the aim was to derail Yamal’s construction, in the end, the plant was financed by Russian and Chinese banks and its output never faced sanctions.

Thus it was under the proud eyes of Mr. Putin that the first cargo from Yamal L.N.G. was loaded into the Russian icebreaker/tanker Christophe de Margerie (named after the recently deceased chief executive the French energy company Total, which holds a 20 percent interest in the project.) The cargo was initially intended for Asia, but as gas prices soared in Britain, it made its way to the Isle of Grain terminal near London on Dec. 28.

Here the gas was briefly stored but never made its way to the British grid. On Dec. 30, the French energy company Engie’s Gaselys tanker picked up cargo and set off for Boston, where gas prices were soaring because of the cold winter.

Because the time between the unloading of the Russian vessel and loading of the Gaselys vessel at Grain was brief, it is safe to assume that the Gaselys vessel was carrying at least some, if not all, of the Russian gas from the Yamal L.N.G. project. The storage facility in London might also have been holding L.N.G. from other producers. Nonetheless the Russia news media has gloated over this gas delivery to Boston and claimed it as Russian.

In the globalizing natural gas markets, we can expect more of these trades. Once, natural gas was primarily a regional resource delivered by land-based pipelines, but in recent years, there has been a rapid growth in the shipping of natural gas in liquefied form across the globe. Indeed, another shipment of Russian liquefied natural gas via France is expected to arrive in New England in February.