{"id":1691,"date":"2008-02-12T12:30:06","date_gmt":"2008-02-12T12:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jcm.org.uk\/blog\/?p=1691"},"modified":"2008-02-12T12:43:56","modified_gmt":"2008-02-12T12:43:56","slug":"russias-energy-blackmail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2008\/02\/russias-energy-blackmail\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia&#8217;s energy blackmail"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My big worry over Gazprom boss Dmitry Medvedev becoming president of Russia is his use of the country&#8217;s gas supplies as political weapons.<!--more--> Because we all know that&#8217;s what&#8217;s really going on with the <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/world\/europe\/7240191.stm\">current dispute with Ukraine<\/a> &#8211; a revival of previous spats, and due to come to a head some time this afternoon, when the deadline runs out and Gazprom plans to cut off a quarter of Ukraine&#8217;s gas.<\/p>\n<p>How do we know? Well why would Ukraine&#8217;s president be holding talks with Russia&#8217;s president if this is a dispute between a commercial organisation and a state, rather than two states? And do you think that Ukraine&#8217;s recent invitation to join the WTO and negotiations to join NATO are really unrelated?<\/p>\n<p>Expect to see much more of this sort of thing over the next few years &#8211; especially now that Russia&#8217;s done a deal with Serbia to control the southern pipeline route into Europe&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Handy background from Ukraine blog Foreign Notes:<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/foreignnotes.blogspot.com\/2008\/02\/gas-showdown-imminent-again.html\">Part 1<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/foreignnotes.blogspot.com\/2008\/02\/high-noon-approaching.html\">Part 2<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/foreignnotes.blogspot.com\/2008\/02\/independent-on-ukrainerussia-gas-crisis.html\">Part 3<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>More:<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.euronews.net\/index.php?page=info&#038;article=469585&#038;lng=1\">EuroNews<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iht.com\/articles\/ap\/2008\/02\/11\/europe\/EU-GEN-Ukraine-Uneasy-Neighbors.php\">International Herald Tribune<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rferl.org\/featuresarticle\/2008\/02\/e7e9407c-5d2d-483d-81e3-35e991299433.html\">Radio Free Europe<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/afp.google.com\/article\/ALeqM5hlO-wYw9O12EMTDNl2MtqDABm7Rw\">AFP<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/bondsNews\/idUSL1239089820080212\">Reuters<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lefigaro.fr\/international\/2008\/02\/12\/01003-20080212ARTFIG00322-menace-d-une-nouvelle-guerre-du-gaz-avec-kiev.php\">Le Figaro<\/a> (FR), <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lesechos.fr\/info\/inter\/4685912.htm\">Les Echos<\/a> (FR)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My big worry over Gazprom boss Dmitry Medvedev becoming president of Russia is his use of the country&#8217;s gas supplies as political weapons. <a href=\"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2008\/02\/russias-energy-blackmail\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63,21,18],"tags":[40,38,182],"class_list":["post-1691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-former-ussr","category-ukraine","tag-energy","tag-russia","tag-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1691\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}