Russian President Vladimir Putin miscalculated again when he stopped natural gas shipments to Poland and Bulgaria on April 27. Now Russia appears to have lost the gas markets in both countries as they are preparing to permanently wean themselves from Russian energy supplies. The official... MORE

In early April, high-level Italian and French delegations traveled separately to Azerbaijan to discuss cooperation in the energy sector, including natural gas exports and “green” electricity generated from Caspian-basin wind (Minenergy.gov.az, April 2, 8). The twin visits occurred against the background of mounting anxieties about... MORE

On April 27, Russia’s Gazprom completely suspended natural gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria under long-term contracts that were supposed to be valid through the end of 2022. The move was explained by Gazprom as a necessity, as the Russian gas importers in both countries... MORE

Introduction Across the world, energy investments are gradually shifting towards renewables as part of commitments to curb global warming. In this trend, China is seen as both a climate hero and a climate criminal – the country is simultaneously by far the largest investor in... MORE

On April 19, the Latvian Economy Minister Jānis Vitenbergs announced his government’s decision to support entirely abandoning natural gas supplies from Russia by the end of 2022 (Em.gov.lv, April 19). The strategy in that regard relies on expanding liquefied natural gas (LNG) regasification capacity across... MORE

The Russo-Ukrainian war has cast doubt on the sustainability of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative’s (BRI) “Northern Corridor” because of mounting Western sanctions on this overland route’s key links—Russia and Belarus (see EDM, April 8, 18). The growing vulnerability of the Northern Corridor, which... MORE

Russia’s full-scale war of aggression against Ukraine, which commenced on February 24 (Kremlin.ru, February 24), pushed the world’s largest advanced economies to introduce several rounds of increasing economic sanctions against the Russian Federation (Meduza, March 8). While the initial impact of those punitive measures seemed... MORE

On March 29, the Polish government announced that it will unilaterally place an embargo on Russian coal imports within two months (Rzeczpospolita, March 29); and a day later, it declared that Polish refineries will “do whatever they can” to terminate Russian crude supplies by the... MORE

Moscow-based commentators who remain convinced that Russia saved the current government in Kazakhstan by intervening there in January (see EDM, January 19, 21) are outraged that the Central Asian country is not supporting Russia in the Ukrainian conflict but rather publicly taking positions that challenge... MORE

Combat operations on all key fronts of the Russo-Ukrainian war continue non-stop, even if without decisive action, but the transit of Russian natural gas to Europe through Ukraine’s pipeline system persists without interruptions. This may appear aberrant given President Vladimir Putin’s well-documented propensity to “weaponize”... MORE