By Dan Bilefsky International Herald Tribune
Published: October 18, 2006
BRUSSELS Russia’s ambassador to the European Union sent a strong signal that European leaders looking for more cooperation over oil and natural gas supplies would face resistance from President Vladimir Putin at a meeting in Finland on Friday.
Russia will not yield to key EU energy demands and is increasingly weary of foreign companies’ developing the country’s energy sources, Vladimir Chizhov, Moscow’s ambassador, said in an interview.
The meeting between Russia and the EU – the world’s largest country and the world’s biggest trading bloc – will take place in an atmosphere fraught with fear that Moscow is becoming increasingly detached from the West and tinged with Russian suspicions that newer EU members from Eastern Europe are turning the bloc against the Kremlin.
“The EU has become a multi-headed monster that many in Russia don’t comprehend – and the number of heads keeps increasing,” Chizhov said.
“The EU’s acquisition of the newcomers from the East made things more difficult because it brought in countries with grievances of the past Soviet era – a hangover from the Cold War and one that extends as far back as the 19th century,” he said.
Accepting EU demands for Russia to slash gas prices risked destroying the Russian economy, he said. He said the call by Brussels for Russia to sign an energy charter, which the EU hopes would open up more transit lines and more access to independent gas producers in Russia and neighboring former Soviet states, faced stiff resistance.
“It is unnatural to subsidize countries and their economies. We have been doing this for 15 years through offering low price energy,” said Chizhov, who is known in Brussels for emanating charm while hammering the Kremlin’s line. “Now, the EU tells us to bring internal domestic prices in line with world prices but that can’t happen overnight or the Russian economy will disappear.”
He confirmed – in perhaps the clearest terms of any Kremlin official to date – that Moscow was increasingly skeptical of joint agreements with foreign companies to develop energy resources, and particularly natural gas fields in Russia.
“I don’t expect similar deals in the future by which Russia allows foreign consortiums to develop gas and oil fields,” he said. “The trouble is that it takes a long time and as project costs double, the day when profits drop into the Russian budget comes farther and farther away.”
The EU’s calls for Russia to sign an energy charter were unlikely to succeed.
If Russian officials are skeptical of Europe, the sentiment is mutual – although the degree of skepticism depends on geography, with the Baltic states far more critical of Russia than, say, Portugal or Greece.
Capturing the current European mood, the European commission vice president, Siim Kallas, said recently that events in Russia bore “dreadful similarities to the Stalinist era of the 1930s.” According to a recent BBC poll, half of all Britons and 62 per cent per cent of French people have a poor opinion of Russia.
The EU and Russia, at once mutually dependent and distrustful of each other, come together as many in Europe believe they are witnessing an authoritarian shift, underscored by Russia’s punishing blockade on Georgia, increasing economic nationalism in the energy sector and the recent murder of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
When they dine with Putin in Finland, EU leaders say they hope to overcome these divisions by finding common ground over energy security, while challenging Russia over Georgia and human rights.
But the bloc’s desire to balance talk tough with an outstretched hand will not be easy. The EU is reluctant to alienate Moscow, which supplies a quarter of Europe’s oil and gas. EU leaders say they fear that the EU’s lack of a united front over Russia will play into the hands of Putin, who has proven adept at exploiting the bloc’s internal divisions. Even efforts this week to issue a common statement on Georgia nearly fell apart as the EU tried to balance Baltic states’ demand for strong action with French calls for restraint.
“This is a question not only of solidarity but also credibility for the EU,” the European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, said Wednesday. “We must address all issues with a common voice and not a discordant chorus.”
EU energy security remains by far the EU’s biggest concern. Russia’s decision to cut off the flow of natural gas to Ukraine in January, resulting in a temporary cuts of gas in other parts of Europe, raised alarms while intensifying calls for the EU to offset its dependence on Russian energy.
At the same time, last week’s decision by Gazprom, Russia’s powerful state monopoly, to develop the huge Shtokman gas field without foreign partners and a recent clash between Royal Dutch Shell over the company’s alleged environmental breaches in the Sakhalin field aroused EU fears that the Kremlin was tightening its hold over the energy sector.
But Chizhov argued that it was Europe – not Russia – that had protectionist impulses. He said many in Britain reacted with horror when rumors recently circulated that Gazprom was preparing to bid for Centrica, the owner of British Gas. Meanwhile, he said many in Russia viewed the €26.8 billion, or $33.6 billion, takeover in June of the European steel maker Arcelor by Mittal of India as a plot to thwart a rival Russian bidder, Severstal.
“Whenever a Russian company expresses interest in Europe, all hell breaks loose and there’s a fear that the Russians are coming,” he said.
The Lahti meeting was initially intended to focus almost exclusively on energy policy. But the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said this week it would be hard to avoid raising concerns over human rights, including the murder of Politkovskaya.
Katinka Barysch, a Russia expert at the London-based Center for European Reform, argued that the only way for Russia and the EU to overcome their mutual disillusionment was for Europe to accept that an increasingly self-confident Russia is no longer eager to align itself with European standards and values – as it did when it was politically weak and economically unstable after the fall of communism.
Moscow, meanwhile, must recognize that an inward, autocratic-sounding Russia is not in its economic or strategic interests.
“The EU has looked on helplessly as Putin has exiled his critics, renationalized the countries biggest oil firm and abolished regional elections,” she said. “No amount of upbeat statements after summits can hide the fact that two sides do not agree on what their partnership should look like.”
Chizhov said the EU did not have the moral high ground to criticize Russia over human rights, given the way it treated its minorities, in particular ethnic Russians who he said were treated like second class citizens in Baltic states like Latvia.
“EU countries are facing great problems with their minorities,” he said, “As a multiethnic country with a thousand years of coexistence, we can help share our knowledge with the EU. We can teach them something.”
BRUSSELS Russia’s ambassador to the European Union sent a strong signal that European leaders looking for more cooperation over oil and natural gas supplies would face resistance from President Vladimir Putin at a meeting in Finland on Friday.
Russia will not yield to key EU energy demands and is increasingly weary of foreign companies’ developing the country’s energy sources, Vladimir Chizhov, Moscow’s ambassador, said in an interview.
The meeting between Russia and the EU – the world’s largest country and the world’s biggest trading bloc – will take place in an atmosphere fraught with fear that Moscow is becoming increasingly detached from the West and tinged with Russian suspicions that newer EU members from Eastern Europe are turning the bloc against the Kremlin.
“The EU has become a multi-headed monster that many in Russia don’t comprehend – and the number of heads keeps increasing,” Chizhov said.
“The EU’s acquisition of the newcomers from the East made things more difficult because it brought in countries with grievances of the past Soviet era – a hangover from the Cold War and one that extends as far back as the 19th century,” he said.
Accepting EU demands for Russia to slash gas prices risked destroying the Russian economy, he said. He said the call by Brussels for Russia to sign an energy charter, which the EU hopes would open up more transit lines and more access to independent gas producers in Russia and neighboring former Soviet states, faced stiff resistance.
“It is unnatural to subsidize countries and their economies. We have been doing this for 15 years through offering low price energy,” said Chizhov, who is known in Brussels for emanating charm while hammering the Kremlin’s line. “Now, the EU tells us to bring internal domestic prices in line with world prices but that can’t happen overnight or the Russian economy will disappear.”
He confirmed – in perhaps the clearest terms of any Kremlin official to date – that Moscow was increasingly skeptical of joint agreements with foreign companies to develop energy resources, and particularly natural gas fields in Russia.
“I don’t expect similar deals in the future by which Russia allows foreign consortiums to develop gas and oil fields,” he said. “The trouble is that it takes a long time and as project costs double, the day when profits drop into the Russian budget comes farther and farther away.”
The EU’s calls for Russia to sign an energy charter were unlikely to succeed.
If Russian officials are skeptical of Europe, the sentiment is mutual – although the degree of skepticism depends on geography, with the Baltic states far more critical of Russia than, say, Portugal or Greece.
Capturing the current European mood, the European commission vice president, Siim Kallas, said recently that events in Russia bore “dreadful similarities to the Stalinist era of the 1930s.” According to a recent BBC poll, half of all Britons and 62 per cent per cent of French people have a poor opinion of Russia.
The EU and Russia, at once mutually dependent and distrustful of each other, come together as many in Europe believe they are witnessing an authoritarian shift, underscored by Russia’s punishing blockade on Georgia, increasing economic nationalism in the energy sector and the recent murder of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
When they dine with Putin in Finland, EU leaders say they hope to overcome these divisions by finding common ground over energy security, while challenging Russia over Georgia and human rights.
But the bloc’s desire to balance talk tough with an outstretched hand will not be easy. The EU is reluctant to alienate Moscow, which supplies a quarter of Europe’s oil and gas. EU leaders say they fear that the EU’s lack of a united front over Russia will play into the hands of Putin, who has proven adept at exploiting the bloc’s internal divisions. Even efforts this week to issue a common statement on Georgia nearly fell apart as the EU tried to balance Baltic states’ demand for strong action with French calls for restraint.
“This is a question not only of solidarity but also credibility for the EU,” the European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, said Wednesday. “We must address all issues with a common voice and not a discordant chorus.”
EU energy security remains by far the EU’s biggest concern. Russia’s decision to cut off the flow of natural gas to Ukraine in January, resulting in a temporary cuts of gas in other parts of Europe, raised alarms while intensifying calls for the EU to offset its dependence on Russian energy.
At the same time, last week’s decision by Gazprom, Russia’s powerful state monopoly, to develop the huge Shtokman gas field without foreign partners and a recent clash between Royal Dutch Shell over the company’s alleged environmental breaches in the Sakhalin field aroused EU fears that the Kremlin was tightening its hold over the energy sector.
But Chizhov argued that it was Europe – not Russia – that had protectionist impulses. He said many in Britain reacted with horror when rumors recently circulated that Gazprom was preparing to bid for Centrica, the owner of British Gas. Meanwhile, he said many in Russia viewed the €26.8 billion, or $33.6 billion, takeover in June of the European steel maker Arcelor by Mittal of India as a plot to thwart a rival Russian bidder, Severstal.
“Whenever a Russian company expresses interest in Europe, all hell breaks loose and there’s a fear that the Russians are coming,” he said.
The Lahti meeting was initially intended to focus almost exclusively on energy policy. But the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said this week it would be hard to avoid raising concerns over human rights, including the murder of Politkovskaya.
Katinka Barysch, a Russia expert at the London-based Center for European Reform, argued that the only way for Russia and the EU to overcome their mutual disillusionment was for Europe to accept that an increasingly self-confident Russia is no longer eager to align itself with European standards and values – as it did when it was politically weak and economically unstable after the fall of communism.
Moscow, meanwhile, must recognize that an inward, autocratic-sounding Russia is not in its economic or strategic interests.
“The EU has looked on helplessly as Putin has exiled his critics, renationalized the countries biggest oil firm and abolished regional elections,” she said. “No amount of upbeat statements after summits can hide the fact that two sides do not agree on what their partnership should look like.”
Chizhov said the EU did not have the moral high ground to criticize Russia over human rights, given the way it treated its minorities, in particular ethnic Russians who he said were treated like second class citizens in Baltic states like Latvia.
“EU countries are facing great problems with their minorities,” he said, “As a multiethnic country with a thousand years of coexistence, we can help share our knowledge with the EU. We can teach them something.” read more
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A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
