Word: belarus
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Passions were riding high Jan. 8, as the hockey team of Russia's state-run energy giant Gazprom locked horns with the Belarus national team in the final game of the annual Belarus President's international hockey tournament in Minsk. In a desperate moment, a Belarusian tripped the Gazprom captain with his stick, but the Russian scrambled back to his feet to pass the puck in a lightning movement that led to a goal. Gazprom won the game 4-3, and the cup. And well it should, smiled the Gazprom captain Alexander Medvedev, 51, because Gazprom always wins...
...skating, Medvedev is deputy chairman of Gazprom's management committee and general director of Gazpromexport, Gazprom's export arm, which accounts for 80% of the revenue of the world's second largest energy company and supplies a quarter of Europe's natural gas--and 100% of Belarus'. Medvedev's remark hit home for his fellow hockey buff and adversary--the forward who had tripped him up so uncouthly, also known as the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko. On a tense New Year's Eve night a week earlier, Medvedev forced Lukashenko to accept a price hike that more than doubled...
Medvedev now says publicly that Gazprom is also targeting the $12.8 billion Sakhalin I project, operated by an Exxon-led consortium. It fits perfectly with Russia's strategy to get more control of its energy assets. Exxon hasn't capitulated by any means, but it still might learn what Belarus and SE did: Gazprom always wins...
...things are very different. Under Putin, Russia has used fuel rather than military power as its weapon in trying to quell attempts by Ukraine, Belarus and Georgia to wriggle free of its tutelage. The Russian authorities have hinted that countries in Western Europe ought to avoid annoying them, too. Exports of gas and oil, moreover, have balanced the Russian budget and enabled the government to take unprecedented initiatives, which Putin mentioned in his address. As billions of petrochemical dollars pour into the nation's coffers, he seeks to reinvigorate its scientific base. The down-at-heels research institutes...
...capable, the number drops. Progress on rounding up loose, radiological matter - non-weapons-grade material that is the stuff of dirty bombs - is even worse. He said the score drops to 4 out of 10 when it comes to destroying chemical weapons. (He happily noted that Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus all destroyed their stockpiles...