Suchergebnisse

Energy is one of the key tools of Russian geopolitical advocacy that Russia can still use efficiently through the energy supply systems built up after WWII and that is still unavoidable. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the advocacy role of the Russian state has decreased however it has never completely lost its influence on the energy sector and thereby on the countries depending on it. We can speak about the active use of energy relations as a tool of political advocacy again since 2006, nonetheless we cannot observe a complete lack of use of these tools between 1990 and 2006 either. The former Soviet republics and the former satellite countries were the targets of these actions, which illustrates the long-term effects of energy dependency systems developed between 1945 and 1990. The 2006 Russian-Ukrainian conflict was the first, when Russia did not only threaten with but actually reduced the amount of natural gas transported. During the 2006 and the 2009 Russian-Ukrainian conflicts, it became clear that Russia actually uses limitation of supply and price policy pressure and not only as a means of threat in order to enforce its political interests, even accepting its negative consequences.