Russia Reform Monitor No. 1523, January 7, 2008
 American Foreign Policy Council, Washington, DC

Gazprom's eye on Africa;
The Kremlin digs in on Kosovo

Editor: Jonas Bernstein
January 2:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has opened a ski center in Krasnaya Polyana near the Black Sea resort of Sochi, calling it “the first sign” of preparations for the Winter Olympics that will be held in Sochi in 2014, NEWSru.com reports. Putin thanked the state-owned energy giant Gazprom, which is financing the project, adding that in order achieve greater results in sports competition, “we need to learn to build such sports centers and maintain them.”


January 4:

Bloomberg News reports that Ukraine’s government is asking the United Nations to recognize the 1932 Ukrainian famine as an act of genocide, worsening already frosty relations with Russia, which says the famine resulted from drought. Last November, Russian nationalists vandalized an exhibit on the famine at Ukraine’s embassy in Moscow. Russia’s government did not condone the attack but called Ukraine’s depiction of the famine, which killed at least 7 million people, a “one-sided falsification of history.” “It’s completely impossible to treat it as genocide,” Bloomberg quotes President Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, as saying. “What happened there happened not only in Ukraine but in many parts of the former Soviet Union.”


January 5:

The Financial Times quotes a senior Nigerian oil industry official as saying that Gazprom is offering to invest in energy infrastructure in return for the chance to develop some of the world’s largest gas deposits. “What Gazprom is proposing is mind-boggling,” the official said. “They’re talking tough and saying the West has taken advantage of us in the last 50 years and they’re offering us a better deal... They are ready to beat the Chinese, the Indians and the Americans.” The Russian move, which will likely raise Western concerns over Gazprom’s increasingly powerful grip on gas supplies to Europe, is part of a courtship that saw President Putin writing to Nigeria’s leader, Umaru Yar’Adua, last year to seek energy cooperation.

Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Yakovenko has reiterated Russia’s warning against a unilateral declaration of Kosovo’s independence, RIA Novosti reports. “Russia, as before, proceeds from the illegitimacy (without a corresponding decision of the UN Security Council) of a declaration of unilateral independence of the territory and its recognition by other states,” he said. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said last month that Russia would use its veto power on the UN Security Council if the world body puts forward a resolution approving a unilateral declaration of Kosovo’s independence.


January 6:

Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin has said that Russia remains willing to host an international conference on the Middle East in 2008 but is making “no practical moves to that end” because it first wants to see whether “stability is in the offing in that region,” Interfax reports. “The Russian Federation is not going to host the conference for the sake of mere formality,” Kamynin told the Rossiya state television channel. Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Yakovenko said on December 25th that the proposed Moscow conference would go ahead if Russia’s interaction with the other Quartet members (the U.S., the UN and the European Union) is “fruitful.”


January 7:

Russia plans to participate in a European mission to investigate Jupiter’s moon Europa and search for simple life forms, Agence France-Presse reports. Interfax quoted the head of Russia’s Space Research Institute, Lev Zelyony, as saying a project to explore Jupiter will soon be included in the program of the European Space Agency (ESA) for the years 2015 to 2025 and that its “main task” is to explore Europa. He said Russia will participate in the program and has suggested landing a craft in one of the fissures in Europa’s icy crust.

Copyright (c) 2008, American Foreign Policy Council. All Rights Reserved.