Silvio Berlusconi
Just in case you'd thought I'd forgotten all about Vlad the Impaler and his plans for world domination with all of the election silliness, know that you are WRONG. And I've got the links to prove it!
One wonders, precisely, what the chairman of Gazprom did to get Khodorkovsky-ed:
{...}The Russian Federal Anti-Monopoly Service said it was pressing ahead with the fine for “violations” of antitrust rules for denying pipeline access to Transnafta, an independent producer in the Tatarstan region.
A spokeswoman at the Anti-Monopoly Service said the fine could be as much as 15 per cent of Gazprom’s annual revenue in the “corresponding market”.
The move signals a subtle power shift within the Kremlin and the country’s energy sector that may weaken Gazprom’s clout{...}
Get that? The Russian Federal Anti-Monopoly Service is going after Gazprom, the STATE controlled gas company, and Putin's favorite foreign policy enforcer, for denying pipeline access to an independent producer. One branch of government is going after another branch of the government? In the west, you'd expect this sort of thing. But in Putin's Russia? {insert sing-song voice here} Somebody's out of favor.
If I were the chairman of Gazprom, well, I'd be thinking about getting my money, my family, and myself out of Russia ASAP. I don't think this is going to end well for him.
The cash crisis is worse than previously thought. Investors are, left, right and center, bailing out of the Russian markets, and there's a bit of a lending crisis as a result.
{...}Bankers and analysts said real estate and retail businesses were being hardest hit by a slowdown in lending. “There are real estate developers who can’t finish projects. They can’t get money from anyone, state banks included,” said one senior banker in Moscow speaking on condition of anonymity.
“No one was ready for the lack of cash to manifest itself so quickly,” he said.
“Nobody has any money. The country has got all this cash but the banking system and capital markets are not particularly good at allocating it. There is a flood of liquidity in the state’s fields and a drought in the private sector.”{...}
Western analysts claim that close to $20B has left the country since Russia invaded Georgia. Russia says, optimistically, that it's only around $5B...at most.
Who do you believe?
On Monday, Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, aka "The Lackey", finally---FINALLY---agreed to pull Russian troops out of the port city of Poti by the end of the week, and out of "Georgian" territory (which, of course, doesn't mean South Ossetia or Abkhazia) by the end of the month.
This diplomatic triumph was brought to you by the President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, who, it seems, managed to get Russia to finally live up to the terms of an agreement it signed a month ago, that, of course, doesn't respect Georgian territorial rights.
Wooooh. Color me impressed!
In another case of European wobbliness, yesterday in Brussels, the EU told Ukrainian president Viktor Yushenko, essentially, we're not going to let you into the EU just yet, but, never fear, your hopes are still alive---you know, once we've weaned ourselves off Russian gas and oil. Whenever that might be.
A communiqué issued at an EU-Ukrainian summit set out a framework for closer ties between Kiev and the 27-nation bloc, but omitted the crucial words “membership perspective” to describe Ukraine’s future relationship with the EU.
Sacre Bleu! C'est Close Une!
Ukraine, a country of 46m people wedged between the EU and Russia, had hoped that Russia’s military assault on Georgia last month, and its subsequent attempt to partition the former Soviet republic, might prompt the EU to go the extra mile for Ukraine.
Tuesday’s communiqué affirmed the EU’s commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and held out the prospect of agreements on free trade and easier travel for Ukrainians to EU countries, but stopped short of a promise of EU accession.
“Be clear that this agreement shuts no door, and maybe it opens some doors. This is the most we could offer, but I believe it to be a substantial step,” Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s president, told reporters.
Diplomats said Germany and the Netherlands, and to a lesser extent Belgium, were the most reluctant to state clearly that Ukraine could one day join the EU.{...}
There were all sorts of claims that last week's schism between Yuschenko and Ukrainian Prime Minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, was the reason for the EU's hedge. I'm not so certain. After all, what's one former Soviet satellite's struggle for democracy and a free market compared to a warm home and petrol for the Peugot?
And, finally, we have everyone's favorite Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, mucking up the works.
{...}Strains in the transatlantic relationship were on display in Rome on Tuesday as Dick Cheney, the US vice-president, and Mr Berlusconi read out statements.
The US delegation, in Italy for five days, had pushed for clear endorsement from Mr Berlusconi. Instead, he did not utter a word of criticism against Russia. The Italian premier said he had tried to explain to Mr Cheney his personal success in helping to defuse “what happened in Ossetia and then in Georgia”. He stressed the importance of sustaining the Nato-Russia council, the joint forum he inaugurated in 2002 with President George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin, then Russia’s president.
According to European diplomats, Bush administration hawks view with suspicion Mr Berlusconi’s close personal ties to the Russian leader and worry about Italy’s presidency of the G8 from January . Italy has already made clear it intends to invite Mr Putin to the summit in Sardinia.{...}
But why, why would Silvio be siding with Russia? Well, do the words "oil," "gas," and "Eni" and "competing pipelines," ring a bell?
{...}US hawks are alarmed by Italy’s tight energy relationship with Russia, particularly the “strategic partnership” reached between Moscow's Gazprom and Italy’s part state-owned Eni in 2006, and the South Stream pipeline planned to take Russian gas across the Black Sea.
{...}Umberto Quadrino, chief executive of Edison, Italy’s second-largest energy group, is lobbying the Bush administration to put its full weight first behind Edison’s ITGI Corridor project and, later, the more ambitious but still somewhat hypothetical Nabucco pipeline. Both would bypass Russia but transit Georgia.
ITGI would take 8bn cubic metres of gas from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz field in the Caspian all the way to Italy. Azeri gas is already reaching Georgia and Turkey and can be extended to Greece. The only “missing link” is an undersea pipeline across to Italy to be built by Edison and Greece’s Depa.{...}
Curious, eh?
Politically, this is a smart move on Berlusconi's part. He's got nothing to lose by siding with the Russians on this one, particularly if he's of the European mindset that Obama will be in the White House come January 20th. If the South Stream pipeline is actually finished, he's got a direct pipeline to Russian gas, that doesn't go through any politically pesky territories in the meanwhile, and he can then charge the rest of Europe a fortune for gas, or, conversely, shut it off when Russia's whims demand that he do so. He's siding with those whom he considers to be the big boys.
Which, of course, leads one to question whether his former electoral competitor, Walter Veltroni, was actually right when he called Berlusconi a fascist, before the April election that brought Berlusconi back to power. Is he the new Mussolini, as the Italian left has advertised? Well, time will tell, but I suspect the judgment won't so much be based upon whether the trains run on time, or if he manages to actually do something about all the Roma who have illegally set up shop in Italy, or if Naples' trash finally gets picked up, but rather on the average Italian's gas bill.
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