The European Union signed an energy agreement on Friday aimed at speeding up the construction of a long-delayed pipeline that would bring gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe and help offset the bloc’s dependence on Russian energy.
The agreement, signed by the leaders of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and Egypt at a summit meeting in Prague, centers on the 2,000-mile Nabucco pipeline, which would bring Central Asian gas to Europe without passing through Russian territory. The European Union hopes the pipeline will start pumping gas to Europe by 2014. The pressing need to find an alternative to Russian supply was underlined in January when a pricing dispute between Russia and Ukraine resulted in a shortage of gas supplies in several European countries.
Turkey, whose cooperation is essential for the pipeline, has haggled for months over transit rules. It indicated on Friday that it was prepared to sign a transit deal by June. But Turkey’s president, Abdullah Gul, also made it clear that his acquiescence would depend on some progress in Turkey’s talks on membership in the European Union, which have stalled in recent months.
Diplomats said representatives of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan refused to sign the agreement because of pressure from Russia, which supplies one-fifth of Europe’s gas. The Kremlin views the Nabucco pipeline as a potential geopolitical challenge, and it has sought to frustrate its developers at every turn. But the recent decline in energy prices has weakened its influence with the gas producers, creating more of an opening for the West.
Turkmenistan on Thursday defended its "sovereign" right to diversify gas export routes, as the West seeks to loosen Moscow's grip on this energy-rich but reclusive Central Asian nation.
Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov told foreign energy bosses at a major conference in the nation's flamboyant capital that Turkmenistan, like any energy producer, had every right to look for new customers.
"Today we are looking for conditions to diversify energy routes and the inclusion of new countries and regions into geography of routes," he said, in an apparent snub to Russia which has a near-monopoly on Turkmen gas exports.
"A key component of securing the reliability of international energy deliveries is the diversification of routes, the creation of multi-branched infrastructure for delivery to consumers," he said.
"The diversification of alternative routes today is more than just a beneficial project," he told the packed conference hall.
His comments came after relations between Russia and Turkmenistan soured dramatically in recent weeks.
Earlier this month, Ashgabat, in a rare outburst of emotion, blamed Russian gas giant Gazprom for causing an explosion on a Turkmen pipeline by unexpectedly cutting its imports of natural gas, causing a pressure build-up.
Russia sent Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's influential deputy Igor Sechin to the Ashgabat conference in an apparent effort to contain the fallout.
The United States and European Union, keen to gain access to Turkmenistan's huge gas reserves, also sent their top officials to the gathering.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso praised growing energy ties with Turkmenistan, which has begun opening up to the West since the 2006 death of longtime dictator Saparmurat Niyazov.
"Cooperation in the energy sphere is now well in hand," he said via video link to the conference.
"Our plan is to link up Turkmenistan with the European market through the South Caucasus," he said, adding he hoped to pay the nation a visit in the coming months.
The EU wants to diversify its gas imports and has placed high hopes on the Nabucco pipeline project, which is supposed to supply the bloc with gas from the Caspian Sea region by 2012-2013 while bypassing Russia.
The Kremlin has repeatedly cast doubt on the project.
Some officials at the conference saw signs that Turkmenistan was in favour of Nabucco, including Turkish Energy Minister Hilmi Guler, whose country lies on the route of the planned pipeline.
"There is a chance that Turkmenistan will join Nabucco," said Guler.
The head of Austrian oil and gas giant OMV, Wolfgang Ruttenstorfer, sounded a similar note: "Turkmenistan is expressing support of Nabucco."
Meanwhile Russia's Sechin downplayed any possible rift between Moscow and Ashgabat following the pipeline explosion in Turkmenistan.
"No accident will lead to an accident in relations with Turkmenistan," he said in his only comments to reporters.
Russia earlier this week presented new proposals for energy cooperation that could replace the 1991 Energy Charter, which it considers obsolete.
Secretary General of the Energy Charter Secretariat Andre Mernier defended the treaty at the conference, saying it had the necessary mechanisms to prevent transit disputes such as the Russia-Ukraine gas conflict in January.
Turkmenistan -- an ex-Soviet republic which lies between the Caspian Sea, Afghanistan, Iran, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan -- is believed to have huge gas reserves beneath its mainly desert territory.
Those reserves languished mostly unexplored during the nearly two-decade rule of Niyazov, or Turkmenbashi as he preferred to be called.
But his successor Berdymukhamedov has shown signs of opening his country up to foreign investment and exploration.
US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Krol was scheduled to address the conference Friday.
See also:
The latest Jamestown Foundation reports on Central Asia, Russia and Energy Games
BERLIN: Hungary, already considered one of Russia's closest allies in Central Europe, has signed two major energy deals that will make it even more dependent on Moscow for its natural gas, analysts said Tuesday.
The deals run counter to claims by the Hungarian prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, that he is a firm supporter of a European Union-sponsored gas pipeline project. The project, called Nabucco, is considered a competitor to a Russian-backed project, called South Stream, in which Moscow has both economic and political interests.
One of the deals, signed in Moscow last week in the presence of Mr. Gyurcsany and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of Russia, calls for the Hungarian government and the state-owned Hungarian Development Bank to finance the South Stream pipeline project on Hungarian territory.
South Stream is a joint venture between Gazprom, the Russian state-controlled energy giant, and the Italian energy company Eni. It will run under the Black Sea and link Russia directly to Bulgaria, bypassing Ukraine, through which more 80 percent of Russian gas is sent to customers in Europe.
Little progress has been made on the pipeline, which is not thought likely to be ready until at least 2015.
Estimates of the cost of South Stream vary. Mr. Putin said last week the sum would be around €10 billion, or $13 billion. The Russian president, Dmitri Medvedev, who has questioned whether the project should go ahead, told investors last month that it might cost as much as €20 billion.
South Stream's northern branch would run from Bulgaria to Serbia, Hungary and Austria.
The 3,000 kilometer, or 1,865 mile, Nabucco pipeline is to be completed in 2013 an estimated cost of €8 billion. It is supposed to bring natural gas to Europe from Azerbaijan and eventually Iran.
Doubts have grown about the feasibility of Nabucco because of uncertainty over both the source of the natural gas and the level of public financing available amid the recession sweeping Europe. Hungary received a €25 billion rescue package from the International Monetary Fund and the E.U. in October.
Mr. Gyurcsany agreed nearly two years ago to support Gazprom's plans to build South Stream, saying that he saw no conflict of interest in supporting both the E.U. and Russian pipeline projects.
For Russia, South Stream would reduce dependence on Ukraine, with which Moscow has continuing political conflicts. It would also lock countries in Central and Southern Europe into long-term Russian energy contracts that would prevent them from diversifying their sources.
"This is all about weakening its dependence on Ukraine," said Peter Kaderjak, director of the Regional Center for Energy Policy Research in Budapest. "But it is also about Russia extending its economic, if not political, influence here in Hungary."
The other deal involves Gazprom and MOL, Hungary's oil and natural gas company, establishing a new gas storage site in Hungary. The new company will be owned equally by Gazprom Export and MOL and will have a capacity of 1.3 billion cubic meters, or 46 billion cubic feet, of natural gas.
MOL said Tuesday that the deal would increase Hungary's energy security as Ukraine became increasingly unreliable as a transit country for sending Russian gas to its customers in Eastern and Western Europe.
MOL recently sold its gas storage facility to the German company E.ON Ruhrgas and, according to analysts, now seeks to re-enter this sector to meet all its domestic needs in times of shortages and also supply natural gas to its neighbors.
Russia has its own interest in teaming up with MOL. In a bid to weaken its dependence on Ukraine, Russia wants to build storage facilities in Europe, besides new pipelines that will bypass Ukraine.
Gazprom is building big storage units in Germany, Austria, and Hungary, and it plans to acquire a site in Slovakia.
See also:
The Moscow Times - Deferring Nabucco is Win-Lose for Gazprom
Azerbaijan and Austria discussed about the prospects of Nabucco
Russian President Dmitri Medvedev reportedly will travel to Turkey in the near future to follow up a recent four-day visit by his Turkish counterpart, Abdullah Gul, to Moscow. The Turks and the Russians certainly have much to discuss.
Russia is moving aggressively to extend its influence throughout the former Soviet empire, while Turkey is rousing itself from 90 years of post-Ottoman isolation. Both are clearly ascendant powers, and it would seem logical that the more the two bump up against one other, the more likely they will gird for yet another round in their centuries-old conflict. But while that may be true down the line, the two Eurasian powers have sufficient strategic incentives to work together for now.
Russia is among the world’s most strategically vulnerable states. Its core, the Moscow region, boasts no geographic barriers to invasion. Russia must thus expand its borders to create the largest possible buffer for its core, which requires forcibly incorporating legions of minorities who do not see themselves as Russian. The Russian government estimates that about 80 percent of Russia’s approximately 140 million people are actually ethnically Russian, but this number is somewhat suspect, as many minorities define themselves based on their use of the Russian language, just as many Hispanics in the United States define themselves by their use of English as their primary language. Thus, ironically, attaining security by creating a strategic buffer creates a new chronic security problem in the form of new populations hostile t o Moscow’s rule. The need to deal with the latter problem explains the development of Russia’s elite intelligence services, which are primarily designed for and tasked with monitoring the country’s multiethnic population.
Russia’s primary challenge, however, is time. In the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, the bottom fell out of the Russian birthrate, with fewer than half the number of babies born in the 1990s than were born in the 1980s. These post-Cold War children are now coming of age; in a few years, their small numbers are going to have a catastrophic impact on the size of the Russian population. By contrast, most non-Russian minorities — in particular those such as Chechens and Dagestanis, who are of Muslim faith — did not suffer from the 1990s birthrate plunge, so their numbers are rapidly increasing even as the number of ethnic Russians is rapidly decreasing. Add in deep-rooted, demographic-impacting problems such as HIV, tuberculosis and heroin abuse — concentrated not just among ethnic Russians but a lso among those of childbearing age — and Russia faces a hard-wired demographic time bomb. Put simply, Russia is an ascending power in the short run, but it is a declining power in the long run.
The Russian leadership is well aware of this coming crisis, and knows it is going to need every scrap of strength it can muster just to continue the struggle to keep Russia in one piece. To this end, Moscow must do everything it can now to secure buffers against external intrusion in the not-so-distant future. For the most part, this means rolling back Western influence wherever and whenever possible, and impressing upon states that would prefer integration into the West that their fates lie with Russia instead. Moscow’s natural gas crisis with Ukraine, August 2008 war with Georgia, efforts to eject American forces from Central Asia and constant pressure on the Baltic states all represent efforts to buy Russia more space — and with that space, more time for survival.
Expanding its buffer against such a diverse and potentially hostile collection of states is no small order, but Russia does have one major advantage: The security guarantor for nearly all of these countries is the United States, and the United States is currently very busy elsewhere. So long as U.S. ground forces are occupied with the Iraqi and Afghan wars, the Americans will not be riding to the rescue of the states on Russia’s periphery. Given this window of opportunity, the Russians have a fair chance to regain the relative security they seek. In light of the impending demographic catastrophe and the present window of opportunity, the Russians are in quite a hurry to act.
Turkey is in many ways the polar opposite of Russia. After the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire following World War I, Turkey was pared down to its core, Asia Minor. Within this refuge, Turkey is nearly unassailable. It is surrounded by water on three sides, commands the only maritime connection between the Black and Mediterranean seas and sits astride a plateau surrounded by mountains. This is a very difficult chunk of territory to conquer. Indeed, beginning in the Seljuk Age in the 11th century, the ancestors of the modern Turks took the better part of three centuries to seize this territory from its previous occupant, the Byzantine Empire.
The Turks have used much of the time since then to consolidate their position such that, as an ethnicity, they reign supreme in their realm. The Persians and Arabs have long since lost their footholds in Anatolia, while the Armenians were finally expelled in the dying days of World War I. Only the Kurds remain, and they do not pose a demographic challenge to the Turks. While Turkey exhibits many of the same demographic tendencies as other advanced developing states — namely, slowing birthrates and a steadily aging population — there is no major discrepancy between Turk and Kurdish birthrates, so the Turks should continue to comprise more than 80 percent of the country’s population for some time to come. Thus, while the Kurds will continue to be a source of nationalistic friction, they do not constitute a fundamental challenge to the power or operations of the Turkish state, like minorities in Russia are destined to do in the years ahead.
Turkey’s security is not limited to its core lands. Once one moves beyond the borders of modern Turkey, the existential threats the state faced in years past have largely melted away. During the Cold War, Turkey was locked into the NATO structure to protect itself from Soviet power. But now the Soviet Union is gone, and the Balkans and Caucasus — both former Ottoman provinces — are again available for manipulation. The Arabs have not posed a threat to Anatolia in nearly a millennium, and any contest between Turkey and Iran is clearly a battle of unequals in which the Turks hold most of the cards. If anything, the Arabs — who view Iran as a hostile power with not only a heretical religion but also with a revolutionary foreign policy calling for the overthrow of most of the Arab regimes — are practically welcoming the Turks back. Despite both its imperial past and its close security association with the Americans, the Arabs see Turkey as a trusted mediator, and even an exemplar.
With the disappearance of the threats of yesteryear, many of the things that once held Turkey’s undivided attention have become less important to Ankara. With the Soviet threat gone, NATO is no longer critical. With new markets opening up in the former Soviet Union, Turkey’s obsession with seeking EU membership has faded to a mere passing interest. Turkey has become a free agent, bound by very few relationships or restrictions, but dabbling in events throughout its entire periphery. Unlike Russia, which feels it needs an empire to survive, Turkey is flirting with the idea of an empire simply because it can — and the costs of exploring the option are negl igible.
Whereas Russia is a state facing a clear series of threats in a very short time frame, Turkey is a state facing a veritable smorgasbord of strategic options under no time pressure whatsoever. Within that disconnect lies the road forward for the two states — and it is a road with surprisingly few clashes ahead in the near term.
There are four zones of overlapping interest for the Turks and Russians.
First, the end of the Soviet empire opened up a wealth of economic opportunities, but very few states have proven adept at penetrating the consumer markets of Ukraine and Russia. Somewhat surprisingly, Turkey is one of those few states. Thanks to the legacy of Soviet central planning, Russian and Ukrainian industry have found it difficult to retool away from heavy industry to produce the consumer goods much in demand in their markets. Because most Ukrainians and Russians cannot afford Western goods, Turkey has carved out a robust and lasting niche with its lower-cost exports; it is now the largest supplier of imports to the Russian market. While this is no exercise in hard power, this Turkish penetration nevertheless is cause for much concern among Russian authorities.
So far, Turkey has been scrupulous about not politicizing these useful trade links beyond some intelligence-gathering efforts (particularly in Ukraine). Considering Russia’s current financial problems, having a stable source of consumer goods — especially one that is not China — is actually seen as a positive. At least for now, the Russian government would rather see its trade relationship with Turkey stay strong. There will certainly be a clash later — either as Russia weakens or as Turkey becomes more ambitious — but for now, the Russians are content with the trade relationship.
Second, the Russian retreat in the post-Cold War era has opened up the Balkans to Turkish influence. Romania, Bulgaria and the lands of the former Yugoslavia are all former Ottoman possessions, and in their day they formed the most advanced portion of the Ottoman economy. During the Cold War, they were all part of the Communist world, with Romania and Bulgaria formally incorporated into the Soviet bloc. While most of these lands are now absorbed into the European Union, Russia’s ties to its fellow Slavs — most notably the Serbs and Bulgarians — have allowed it a degree of influence that most Europeans choose to ignore. Additionally, Russia has long held a friendly relationship with Greece and Cyprus, both to complicate American policy in Europe and to provide a flank against Turkey. Still, thanks to proximity and trading links, Turkey clearly holds the upper hand in this theater of competition.
But this particular region is unlikely to generate much Turkish-Russian animosity, simply because both countries are in the process of giving up.
Most of the Balkan states are already members of an organization that is unlikely to ever admit Russia or Turkey: the European Union. Russia simply cannot meet the membership criteria, and Cyprus’ membership in essence strikes the possibility of Turkish inclusion. (Any EU member can veto the admission of would-be members.) The EU-led splitting of Kosovo from Serbia over Russian objections was a body blow to Russian power in the region, and the subsequent EU running of Kosovo as a protectorate greatly limited Turkish influence as well. Continuing EU expansion means that Turkish influence in the Balkans will shrivel just as Russian influence already has. Trouble this way lies, but not between Turkey and Russia. If anything, their joint exclusion might provide some room for the two to agree on something.
The third area for Russian-Turkish competition is in energy, and this is where things get particularly sticky. Russia is Turkey’s No. 1 trading partner, with energy accounting for the bulk of the trade volume between the two countries. Turkey depends on Russia for 65 percent of its natural gas and 40 percent of its oil imports. Though Turkey has steadily grown its trade relationship with Russia, it does not exactly approve of Moscow’s penchant for using its energy relations with Europe as a political weapon. Russia has never gone so far as to cut supplies to Turkey directly, but Turkey has been indirectly affected more than once when Russia decided to cut supplies to Ukraine because Moscow felt the need to reassert its writ in Kiev.
Sharing the Turks’ energy anxiety, the Europeans have been more than eager to use Turkey as an energy transit hub for routes that would bypass the Russians altogether in supplying the European market. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline is one such route, and others, like Nabucco, are still stuck in the planning stages. The Russians have every reason to pressure the Turks into staying far away from any more energy diversification schemes that could cost Russia one of its biggest energy clients — and deny Moscow much of the political leverage it currently holds over the Europeans who are dependent on the Russian energy network.
There are only two options for the Turks in diversifying away from the Russians. The first lies to Turkey’s south in Iraq and Iran. Turkey has big plans for Iraq’s oil industry, but it will still take considerable time to upgrade and restore the oil fields and pipelines that have been persistently sabotaged and ransacked by insurgents during the fighting that followed the 2003 U.S. invasion. The Iranians offer another large source of energy for the Turks to tap into, but the political complications attached to dealing with Iran are still too prickly for the Turks to move ahead with concrete energy deals at this time. Complications remain for now, but Turkey wi ll be keeping an eye on its Middle Eastern neighbors for robust energy partnerships in the future.
The second potential source of energy for the Turks lies in Central Asia, a region that Russia must keep in its grip at all costs if it hopes to survive in the long run. In many ways this theater is the reverse of the Balkans, where the Russians hold the ethnic links and the Turks the economic advantage. Here, four of the five Central Asian countries — Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan — are Turkic. But as a consequence of the Soviet years, the infrastructure and economies of all four are so hardwired into the Russian sphere of influence that it would take some major surgery to liberate them. But the prize is a rich one: Central Asia possesses the world& #8217;s largest concentration of untapped energy reserves. And as the term “central” implies, whoever controls the region can project power into the former Soviet Union, China and South Asia. If the Russians and Turks are going to fight over something, this is it.
Here Turkey faces a problem, however — it does not directly abut the region. If the Turks are even going to attempt to shift the Central Asian balance of power, they will need a lever. This brings us to the final — and most dynamic — realm of competition: the Caucasus.
Turkey here faces the best and worst in terms of influence projection. The Azerbaijanis do not consider themselves simply Turkic, like the Central Asians, but actually Turkish. If there is a country in the former Soviet Union that would consider not only allying with but actually joining with another state to escape Russia’s orbit, it would be Azerbaijan with Turkey. Azerbaijan has its own significant energy supplies, but its real value is in serving as a willing springboard for Turkish influence into Central Asia.
However, the core of Azerbaijan does not border Turkey. Instead, it is on the other side of Armenia, a country that thrashed Azerbaijan in a war over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave and still has lingering animosities toward Ankara because of the 1915 Armenian “genocide.” Armenia has sold itself to the Russians to keep its Turkish foes at bay.
This means Turkish designs on Central Asia all boil down to the former Soviet state of Georgia. If Turkey can bring Georgia fully under its wing, Turkey can then set about to integrate with Azerbaijan and project influence into Central Asia. But without Georgia, Turkey is hamstrung before it can even begin to reach for the real prize in Central Asia.
In this, the Turks do not see the Georgians as much help. The Georgians do not have much in the way of a functional economy or military, and they have consistently overplayed their hand with the Russians in the hopes that the West would come to their aid. Such miscalculations contributed to the August 2008 Georgian-Russian war, in which Russia smashed what military capacity the Georgians did possess. So while Ankara sees the Georgians as reliably anti-Russian, it does not see them as reliably competent or capable.
This means that Turkish-Russian competition may have been short-circuited before it even began. Meanwhile, the Americans and Russians are beginning to outline the rudiments of a deal. Various items on the table include Russia allowing the Americans to ship military supplies to Afghanistan via Russia’s sphere of influence, changes to the U.S. ballistic missile defense (BMD) program, and a halt to NATO expansion. The last prong is a critical piece of Russian-Turkish competition. Should the Americans and Europeans put their weight behind NATO expansion, Georgia would be a logical candidate — meaning most of the heavy lifting in terms of Turkey projecting power eastward would already be done. But if the Americans and Europeans do not put their weight behind NATO expansion, Georgia would fall by the wayside and Turkey would have to do all the work of projecting power eastward — and facing the Russians — alone.
There is clearly no shortage of friction points between the Turks and the Russians. With the two powers on a resurgent path, it was only a matter of time before they started bumping into one another. The most notable clash occurred when the Russians decided to invade Georgia last August, knowing full well that neither the Americans nor the Europeans would have the will or capability to intervene on behalf of the small Caucasian state. NATO’s strongest response was a symbolic show of force that relied on Turkey, as the gatekeeper to the Black Sea, to allow a buildup of NATO vessels near the Georgian coast and threaten the underbelly of Russia’s former Soviet peri phery.
Turkey disapproved of the idea of Russian troops bearing down in the Caucasus near the Turkish border, and Ankara was also angered by having its energy revenues cut off during the war when the BTC pipeline was taken offline.
The Russians promptly responded to Turkey’s NATO maneuvers in the Black Sea by holding up a large amount of Turkish goods at various Russian border checkpoints to put the squeeze on Turkish exports. But the standoff was short-lived; soon enough, the Turks and Russians came to the negotiating table to end the trade spat and sort out their respective spheres of influence. The Russian-Turkish negotiations have progressed over the past several months, with Russian and Turkish leaders now meeting fairly regularly to sort out the issues where both can find some mutual benefit.
The first area of cooperation is Europe, where both Russia and Turkey have an interest in applying political pressure. Despite Europe’s objections and rejections, the Turks are persistent in their ambitions to become a member of the European Union. At the same time, the Russians need to keep Europe linked into the Russian energy network and divided over any plans for BMD, NATO expansion or any other Western plan that threatens Russian national security. As long as Turkey stalls on any European energy diversification projects, the more it can demand Europe’s attention on the issue of EU membership. In fact, the Turks already threatened as much at the start of the year, when they said outright that if Europe doesn’t need Turkey as an EU member, then Turkey doesn’t need to sign off on any more energy diversification projects that transit Turkish territory. Ankara’s threats against Europe dovetailed nicely with Russia’s natural gas cutoff to Ukraine in January, when the Europeans once again were reminded of Moscow’s energy wrath.
The Turks and the Russians also can find common ground in the Middle East. Turkey is again expanding its influence deep into its Middle Eastern backyard, and Ankara expects to take the lead in handling the thorny issues of Iran, Iraq and Syria as the United States draws down its presence in the region and shifts its focus to Afghanistan. What the Turks want right now is stability on their southern flank. That means keeping Russia out of mischief in places like Iran, where Moscow has threatened to sell strategic S-300 air defense systems and to boost the Iranian nuclear program in order to grab Washington’s attention on other issues deemed vital to Moscow’s national security interests. The United States is already leaning on Russia to pressure Iran in return for other strategic concessions, and the Turks are just as interested as the Americans in taming Russia’s actions in the Middle East.
Armenia is another issue where Russia and Turkey may be having a temporary meeting of minds. Russia unofficially occupies Armenia and has been building up a substantial military presence in the small Caucasian state. Turkey can either sit back, continue to isolate Armenia and leave it for the Russians to dominate through and through, or it can move toward normalizing relations with Yerevan and dealing with Russia on more equal footing in the Caucasus. With rumors flying of a deal on the horizon between Yerevan and Ankara (likely with Russia’s blessing), it appears more and more that the Turks and the Russians are making progress in sorting out their respective spheres of influence.
Ultimately, both Russia and Turkey know that this relationship is likely temporary at best. The two Eurasian powers still distrust each other and have divergent long-term goals, even if in the short term there is a small window of opportunity for Turkish and Russian interests to overlap. The law of geopolitics dictates that the two ascendant powers are doomed to clash — just not today.
"We need to discuss the full range of problems - both in Russia and in Europe - in order to be able to solve them," Mr Putin said, accusing EU states of themselves mistreating Russian ethnic minorities, prisoners and migrants."In [EU] public opinion there is some concern regarding some recent events that happened in Russia. Namely, the murder of some journalists and some rights activists," Mr Barroso replied in bullish tones. "Human rights and rule of law are much more important than diplomacy between two states."New contexts, old mentalities. During the Cold War, the communist countries leader praised their wonderful life standards with pictures from the "Wild West". One of their favorite topics was the homeless Americans. The former Russian president is accusing the EU states now of neglecting the minorities and immigrants. What about the constant attacks against foreigners in big Russian cities?
Following recent developments in Europe 's gas crisis, experts at the European Council on Foreign Relations have issued the following reactions:
Pierre Nöel, Senior Policy Fellow and energy Expert, says: "It's high time the EU gets serious about gas security and presses ahead with the creation of a single gas market. Moreover, the EU must be instrumental in the push for investment in energy security in Eastern Member States. The Czech Presidency should organise a summit where each member state is asked to present a national action plan, which could be backed by common resources."
Andrew Wilson, Senior Policy Fellow and expert on Russia and Ukraine, says: "Europe has woken up to the fact that gas 'crises' are now an annual New Year event, and is rightly resentful at being held hostage to a far-off argument between two neighbouring states. But the truth is even worse: Europe is being held hostage to a Russo-Ukrainian corruption scheme which is a cancer in the politics of the whole of Eastern Europe ."
Vessela Tcherneva, Senior Policy Fellow and Head of ECFR's Sofia Office, says:
"The lesson from the gas crisis in Bulgaria and other countries in the region is that close bilateral relationships with Russia do not translate into gas security. Countries such as Bulgaria , Serbia and Greece , who played the role of Russian 'Trojan horses', were among the first whose gas deliveries were interrupted. Only a European-wide solution - interconnecting the networks of East and West - can be a sustainable one."
ECFR argues for an EU energy security conference to discuss and agree national strategies by vulnerable states to make the European Union less vulnerable for these kinds of crisis situations. The Czech presidency should take the lead in designing a common EU response to this recurring challenge, which regards the whole EU, and not only the East European countries, which are directly affected by the gas cut.
See more on this issue:
EU press Russia to comply its obligations
