Europe and Russia are entering a fateful competition over energy trade. Europe is diversifying its sources of energy away from Russia. Russia is racing with Europe to reduce its own dependence on the European market and substitute with a “Look East” policy that taps into the vast potentials of the […]
Tag: Gas
Russia’s ‘Asymmetrical’ War Over Ukraine
The formal US response to Russia’s demands for security guarantee was delivered to the foreign ministry in Moscow on Wednesday. Moscow’s worst fears came true: Washington simply ducked without addressing the main Russian concerns — NATO’s expansion, rollback of NATO deployments to pre-1997 level, etc. —and instead offered to discuss […]
Radical Green Policies & Anti-Russian Paranoia Exacerbate The EU’s Energy Crisis
Coupled with the continued global economic uncertainty surrounding COVID-19, the result is that the EU will continue suffering from high prices and unreliable supplies so long as it refuses to pragmatically reach long-term supply agreements with Russia. President Putin recently expressed exasperation at the counterproductive policies being pushed by the […]
Nord Stream 2 Is A Double-Edged Geopolitical Tool
When Pavel Zavalny, the chairman of Russian parliamentary committee on energy, made the forecast last Friday that Nord Stream 2 pipeline could start shipping natural gas to Germany as early as next month, it was received with disbelief. But Zavalny was categorical, and was quoted by Reuters as saying, “I […]
Moldova’s Manufactured Energy Crisis Serves Several Strategic Purposes
America might very well be weaponizing the issue at this particular time in order to pressure Russia on other fronts such as Ukraine and Syria. Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov claimed that “Moldova is provoking [its energy crisis] with its own hands” after it refused to acknowledge its debt to the […]
A Face-Off Over Nord Stream 2
The Russian President Vladimir Putin will be delivering “an informative and very important speech and then take part in a plenary discussion” on Wednesday in Moscow at the Russian Energy Week, an international forum on the global energy sector. Expectations are running high in the energy circles in Europe and […]
Russia Will Rescue Europe From Its Energy Crisis
Far from weaponizing energy to let Europe freeze out of supposed geopolitical spite, Russia has used its energy exports during this time of crisis as a tool for repairing bilateral relations and improving how its partners’ publics perceive of it. The US-propagated false information warfare narrative that Russia allegedly weaponizes […]
How India Lost Its Way In Persian Gulf
There have been two successive setbacks in the past one-year period to the India-Iran relationship. India has been literally eased out of two strategically important projects in Iran that were full of promise to uplift the ties in a medium and long term perspective. The first was in July when […]
Germany Draws Another Line In The Sand For The US
Exactly a week after the announcement on December 30 regarding European Union’s long-sought comprehensive investment agreement with China, the Danish Energy Agency received an innocuous revised schedule from Nord Stream 2 AG for the construction of the gas pipeline in the kingdom’s exclusive economic zone. The DEA was notified that […]
Europe’s Gas Alliance With Russia Is A Match Made In Heaven
Amidst the excitement over the killing of the ISIS chief Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, a development of much impact on international security passed by when Denmark made the innocuous announcement on October 30 that it would permit the proposed Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to pass through its exclusive economic zone. […]
Russia And The European Union (II)
Part I The energy relationship The pragmatic dimension of the relationship between the EU and the Russian Federation is within the framework of the energy relations which includes three focal issues. Nevertheless, both partners lack legally binding instruments to direct their pragmatic energy relationship. Negotiations between these partners appeared to […]
Russia And The European Union (I)
After the end of the USSR in 1991, Russia, at that time both weakened and isolated, was becoming a less popular area of investigation and studies compared with the period during the Cold War. However, since the year of 2004, Russia is “back” in the global political arena when Moscow […]
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