Russian natural gas market = capitalism?

In an article about natural gas pipelines to Europe, the New York Times makes the egregious error of implying that Russia's natural gas industry is anything other than an arm of the Russian government:

It is a free-market capitalism that post-Communist Russia has cannily exploited, says Pierre Noël, a professor at Cambridge University and a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

“It is an open, competitive, capitalist economy,” he said. “People build the pipes they want to build.”