Is Russia fighting an energy cold war?
- 2 Jun 06, 08:49 PM
Vladimir Putin met foreign journalists this afternoon to talk about energy politics and the forthcoming G8 summit. The EU has been pushing for Russia to open the gas export market to competition - at present the 50% state owned Gazprom has a monopoly. Putin said firmly this was not in Russia's interest. And he linked his intransigence, overtly, to the West's support for the so called Orange Revolution in the Ukraine.
"Our friends [in the West] actively supported the Orange events in Ukraine. If you want to further support developments there, you pay for that," he said with, as the AP newswire reporter put it, "the color rising in his face".
Putin's stance has brought colour to the faces of some in the west. I've been talking to William Browder, Russia's biggest private investor, about the absence of the rule of law there, in business. Browder has been denied entry to the country and wonders whether Europe has the guts to stand up to Putin, given our high dependence on Russian gas.
Andrei Illarionov, Putin's former economic adviser, told me he found Tony Blair's willingess to allow Gazprom, should it so desire, to take over Centrica...troubling. He is even more troubled by the Prime Minister's decision to sidestep the war of words between Putin and Cheney over the use of Russia's energy resources as a geo-political tool.
David Clark, who was Robin Cook's special adviser, is also troubled: he thinks Europe has to forge some kind of united energy policy in the face of Russia's power - and likens the Kremilin's stance to 19th century "great power politics".
Mark Spelman - Accenture's global expert on energy and adviser to the World Economic Forum - has been telling me how he thinks the solution is to pull Russia into a new system of interdepence, as with Germany after 1945.
Hear from them all on my report on Newsnight tonight: this is the issue that could make the forthcoming G8 summit make Gleneagles look like a tea party. The summit is, as Browder puts it, the last point of leverage on Russia apart from WTO accession. What happens at St Petersburg could determine more than the price of gas.
Comments Post your comment
The solution is to include Russia in the Europen Union and Interdepedence. The Cold War Mentality never solved anything and should be avoided at ALL Costs. We already have the Cold War Mentality in the American Continent with Communists, Republicans and Democrats making our lives miserable. I hope that the vestiges of the Cold War in the American Continent are replaced with an American Union [and the USA dominated by the Libertarians [lp.org] and Greens [gp.org]
Complain about this post