Putin On Stage

Vladimir Putin conducted his valedictory annual news conference today, and it was a bravura performance – more than four and a half hours long (Reuters video). Among the questions posed involved the pipeline war. Putin, a consummate player of market economics whose pipeline strategy – Nord Stream and South Stream – has left the U.S. and the European Union flat-footed, accused Washington of politicizing pipelines. And he’s right – if the issue were purely economic, no one would care much about Russia’s economic inroads in Europe; his critics are apprehensive that, as it has acted in Georgia, Ukraine and elsewhere, Russia will exploit market advantage for political leverage. Putin also pointed out that the west “has no resource base” – no natural gas to put into the alternative pipeline it favors. Again, Putin is correct. That is what makes the West's proposed trans-Caspian and Nabucco lines so far untenable.

Here are Putin’s direct remarks:

"As for what smells of oil or gas, we know how our American partners conduct dialogue in Europe. They come to certain countries, try to convince them not to buy our resources or to try to find different routes to deliver fuels, avoiding Russian territory. They put pressure on these countries and that's already in the political sphere. I think this is a wrong policy, a dumb one. Moreover, it's unprofessional, since behind all this politicization of the question, there are no calculations, there's no resource base."

"On the issue of Gazprom biting into the body of Europe [with its efforts to acquire assets there], why the Americans are so concerned for the European body, I don't know. Maybe because they want a piece of it, they like it, it's a nice body. … Yes, the economic power of Russian companies is growing, of course, but our main consumers, especially in Europe, should only be happy about that. … Gazprom isn't demanding any exclusives, it just requires fair cooperation.

Photo: OpenDemocracy
Rights: Creative Commons