Registan.net

President Lukashenka was able to score a major concession from Russia in getting it to reduce export duties on oil transiting Belarus. While it looks like a significant victory—other instances of Gazprom relaxing fees seemed far more calculated—Lukashenka is actually in a desperately weak position. Commonly derided as “the last dictator in Europe,” […]

In a bulleted list, because I don’t feel like writing paragraphs.

The No Duh Award goes to Christopher Weafer, chief strategist of Russia’s Alpha Bank. “According to Weafer, Belarus may even have deliberately sparked the shutdown by siphoning off oil in the hope that Europe would intervene.” Oh, Sherlock Holmes. In Weafer’s defense, […]

On my other blog, I’ve written fairly extensively of the way Russia has used state monopoly, Gazprom, to manipulate and punish former Soviety countries (interestingly, or perhaps expectedly, only in the winter). It had been limited to those countries with a decidedly pro-American and less-than-pro-Moscow bent… until today. Russia has finally started to […]