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Latest articles from Vladimir Socor
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Gazprom Takes its South Stream Bluff to Bucharest
This week in Bucharest, high-level representatives of the Russian energy business and their Italian allies are making their strongest pitch yet for Romania to join their South Stream gas transport project. Romania is the latest target in Moscow's recent effort to enlist additional countries in... MORE
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Moscow Juggling Capacity and Cost Figures on South Stream
Against the European Union's Southern Corridor project, Russia is redoubling efforts to advertise its own project, South Stream, with Italian backing. The scene for that advertising is in Bucharest this week. Due to stagnant gas production and aging fields in operation, however, Russia has been... MORE
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Putin’s Yamal Offer: a Preliminary Assessment
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's call for Western-assisted development of Yamal gas reserves for export as liquefied natural gas (LNG) (EDM, September 25) holds potential global ramifications. Top managers of no fewer than 10 leading international companies attended the session with Putin in Salekhard on... MORE
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Putin Touts Vast Yamal Project for Global Export of LNG
On September 24 the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin led government ministers and CEO's of some global energy companies on a visit to the Yamal Peninsula in northwestern Siberia. Putin announced that Russia intends to become an exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG) worldwide on... MORE
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Declarative Tenets or Proactive Allied Policy in Europe’s East
Another appeal to Western governments from renowned public figures, this time over Georgia, has appeared in European newspapers (Le Monde, Die Welt, The Guardian, Corriere della Sera, September 22, 23). Signed by the Czech, Lithuanian, and Estonian former heads of state and government (Vaclav Havel,... MORE
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Time to De-Mothball the Budapest Memorandum for Ukraine
A representative group of Ukraine's cultural elite has alerted Western governments and public opinion to Russia's mounting threats against Ukrainian independence. Alarmed by Moscow's latest moves, the signatories of the appeal are also concerned by the failure of Western governments to respond by using existing... MORE
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Maritime Security Weaknesses in the Black Sea
Russian naval operations in August 2008 highlighted the security deficit in the Black Sea. As a littoral country, Russia misused the territory of another littoral country, Ukraine, as a staging ground for attacking a third littoral country, Georgia, using its Black Sea Fleet based in... MORE
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Naval Security Deficit Growing in the Black Sea
On September 15 Russia officially warned that it would intercept and detain Georgian coastal guard boats in the Black Sea, if these attempt to interfere with ships that trade with Abkhazia, or if the Georgian boats otherwise trespass Abkhazia's "maritime border" into "Abkhaz waters." The... MORE
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Russian Military Digs in for the Long Haul in Georgian Territories
On September 15 in Moscow, the Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov signed agreements on military cooperation with the "defense ministers" (Russian citizens Kishmaria and Tanayev) of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. On the same occasion Russia's Border Guard Service command, subordinated to the Federal Security Service... MORE
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Putin Takes Opel’s Wheel
On September 10 General Motors, partly owned by the U.S. government, changed its position and allowed its ailing German subsidiary, Opel, to be "rescued" by a Kremlin-controlled consortium. The German government strongly pressed for the Russian solution in preference to an American one. The issue... MORE