Strongman, The

humility, the Russians saw the war as a pretext to plough on with their old, already rejected initiatives. In October President Medvedev rushed to a conference in Evian, France, and reiterated his call for a new European security treaty, saying events in the Caucasus had ‘demonstrated how absolutely right’ his idea was, and were ‘proof that the international security system based on unipolarity no longer works’. What was he saying? Had he forgotten that it was his country that had just violated the security and territorial integrity of a neighbour? His long-winded appeal for a new treaty fell mostly on deaf ears. This really was, as Saakashvili might have put it, the fox demanding co-ownership of the chicken-house.
    As for Vladimir Putin, his new post as prime minister meant that the economy, rather than foreign policy, was now his major responsibility. That, too, gave him the levers to meddle in a region of ‘privileged interest’. The main lever was Gazprom, the huge state monopoly he had refused to allow his ministers to split up in 2002, which was now a handy instrument of foreign policy. Energy had become a convenient whip with which to punish neighbours. In 2006, a few months after the gas dispute with Ukraine, Russia cut oil supplies to Lithuania after it sold its Mazeikiai refinery to a Polish company rather than to Rosneft. The same year, power lines to Georgia were mysteriously bombed, and Russia refused to allow Georgian investigators to see the evidence or help with repairs. In 2007 Russia cut oil shipments to Estonia following a row over the removal of a Soviet war memorial.
    Towards the end of 2008 another gas conflict with Ukraine was brewing, as Russia again insisted on raising its prices to world levels, and Ukraine refused to pay. This time, with a Western public relations firm on board, the Kremlin tried to pre-empt the bad publicity. They warned Ukraine (and customers farther west) of the impending conflict, and Gazprom sent its top executives on a tour of European capitals to ensure that, if supplies were interrupted, like three years before, people would know it was Ukraine’s fault, not Russia’s. But no one predicted that Putin would go so far as to deliberately cut supplies intended not for Ukraine but for Western Europe.
    Gazprom was owed $2.4 billion by Ukraine for gas already delivered, and wanted to raise the price for 2009 to $250 (and after a few days to $450) per 1,000 cubic metres – a price Ukraine could not pay. On 1 January 2009 Gazprom cut gas supplies, just as it had done in 2006. To make up for the shortfall – again, just as in 2006 – Ukraine began siphoning gas from the export pipelines, and soon customers in Hungary, Austria, Bulgaria, Romania and other countries noticed a considerable drop in pressure. But this time there was no quick resolution, and European countries began to panic. Slovakia even considered restarting a mothballed nuclear power station.
    On 5 January Putin took an astonishing decision. He called in the head of Gazprom, Alexei Miller, plus television cameras, and used the following stilted conversation to announce that for the first time ever Russia would cut gas supplies to customers in Western Europe – mere bystanders to the dispute with Ukraine – in the middle of a freezing winter.
    Alexei Miller : Ukraine has failed to pay its debt for gas supplied in 2008, and that debt amounts to more than $600 million. If things continue like this and Ukraine continues to steal Russian gas, the debt will soon amount to billions of dollars.
    Vladimir Putin : What do you suggest?
    Alexei Miller : It has been suggested to cut the amount of supplies to the border between Russia and Ukraine by exactly the amount Ukraine has stolen, 65.3 million cubic metres, and to subtract the amount of gas stolen in the future.
    Vladimir Putin : Day by day?
    Alexei Miller : Yes, day by day.
    Vladimir Putin : But in that case, our Western European customers will not get the full amount they have contracted for.
    Alexei Miller : Yes, in that case our Western European partners will not be receiving the amounts of gas stolen by Ukraine, but Gazprom will do all it can to compensate for that volume in other ways. We may increase supplies of Russian gas via Belarus and Poland and increase supplies of Russian gas via the Blue Stream to Turkey.
    Vladimir Putin : What about consumers inside Ukraine? They will also be undersupplied. We are talking about large amounts: as far as