Falling energy prices have put pressure on the budgets of the world's major oil-producing nations like Russia.

However, Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn't seem too worried.

"Winter is coming," he said Friday according Bloomberg News. "I am sure the market will come into balance again in the first quarter or toward the middle of next year."

Putin is "sanguine, suggesting falling oil won't force him to meet Western demands that he curb his country's interference in Ukraine," reports Bloomberg News.

Putin's favorable view of winter isn't too surprising. Traditionally, the colder it gets around the world, the better it gets for the Russian economy as its trading partners import more oil and natural gas.

"It is the power of colder weather that allows Russia, as the key supplier of energy to Europe, to apply leverage. That leverage can take the form of higher prices, restricted volumes, a combination of both, or negotiations that directly or indirectly affect these additional costs," Cumberland Advisors Chair David Kotok wrote earlier.

Russia provides one-third of the natural gas that European countries rely on both for heating their homes and running industries. So if there's no natural gas, that's bad news for Europe's economy.