And this is one of the main reasons Russia went to war against Georgia in 2008. They did not want Europe to be energy independent.
Europe’s reluctance towards reliance upon Russian natural gas trade is no secret. It’s also no surprise, due to fallouts between Russia and Ukraine (a major transit country for the trade) in 2006, 2009 and 2014. Currently Russia and Ukraine do not even have a bilateral gas trade, but Russian gas is transported through Ukrainian pipelines to Europe, only to be resold to Ukraine by E.U. countries in “reverse-flow” deals. This doesn’t sound like a stable system, considering the reliance of Europe’s gas supply upon these Ukrainian pipelines (European supplies were cut by 30 percent in the 2009 Ukrainian crisis). Continue reading
Global Geopolitics 