Gas Master

Russia, home to generations of chess masters, has made a series of brilliant moves in a game that its Western European opponents don’t even seem to know that they’re playing.

While Russia’s troops still sit in neighboring Georgia, making an elaborate point about who wields the military power in the Caucasus Mountains and Central Asia, Moscow has begun a sortie on a totally different front: Gazprom, the Russian state-controlled natural-gas monopoly, has offered to buy all of Azerbaijan’s gas exports.


That maneuver makes clear that the Russian incursion into Georgia was partly if not totally part of a wide-ranging plan to secure the country’s place as Europe’s energy kingpin.

An agreement could mean disaster for Western plans to decrease reliance on Russian supplies of natural gas. As with Russia’s occupation of Georgia, the West will have little opportunity to stop the deal.

Forbes