Just over a year ago, Russia cut off natural gas supplies to Ukraine due to a standoff over whether the country would pay full “market price” over the subsidies that it had been receiving. Consequently, given that a large amount of Western Europe’s gas flows through Ukraine’s pipelines, there were a lot of German and French folk freezing their butts off last year until the flow was restored.

The news made international headlines immediately, most likely due to who it affected rather than the simple action itself. But regardless, it was the first sign of a Russia ready to bully its former satellites in a battle for control of the transit systems that deliver a large amount of its government budget to the rest of the world.

January rolls around fast. Now, Belarus is the target.

BRUSSELS, January 8, 2007 (RFE/RL) — European Commission spokesman Ferran Tarradellas Espuny today confirmed that European oil supplies have been disrupted.

“The commission is following the situation very closely,” Tarradellas Espuny said. “I can confirm that there has been an interruption of oil supplies through the ÄDruzhbaÅ pipeline in Poland and my services are looking for information ÄonÅ whether such a cut has had an impact in other branches of the pipeline Äacross EuropeÅ.”

EU Wants Answers

Spokesman Tarradellas Espuny said that the EU has demanded urgent explanations from both Moscow and Minsk.

“We have contacted the Russian and Belarusian and demandÄedÅ clear and detailed explanations of the causes of the interruption,” Tarradellas Espuny said. “This interruption could be motivated, it’s possible as well, ÄbyÅ technical reasons.”

Alyaksandr Bordouski, the chief engineer at Homyeltransnafta Druzhba, told RFE/RL that the firm made “reductions” in oil supplies following an order from Belarus’s state oil firm, Belneftekhim.

Russian Deputy Trade and Economic Development Minister Andrei Sharonov later told ITAR-TASS that Russia had stopped delivering oil to the Druzhba pipeline, which pumps Russian oil across Belarus, as a result of the supply disruption. “Now there is a threat to the fulfillment of international contracts between Russian companies and companies in Western Europe and Eastern Europe,” the news agency quoted him as saying. “We view this situation as force majeure, as the onset of unavoidable circumstances.”

Semyon Vainshtok, the head of Russia’s state pipeline operator Transneft, told reporters in Moscow today that “the Belarusian side cancelled the agreements reached on supplies of oil to its own oil refineries for the month of January. Why? Because they assumed they would be siphoning off ÄoilÅ — unauthorized siphoning. In diplomatic language, this is how you call what the Belarusian side is doing today.”

January is a strategic month for some. It’s hell frozen over in the former Soviet bloc. By cutting off supplies to Ukraine in January, Russia was able to terrorize the Ukrainian people and government into submission. The month has proven just as crucial for Belarus now as Gazprom pulls the same stunt, with President Lukashenko having no choice — despite the change toward hostile and nationalist rhetoric — but to give in as well.

As you can see from the graph below, at the moment Russia must transport its gas through two countries: Ukraine & Belarus.

It was thought at the time that the price hike for Ukraine was but a political stunt meant to punish the Ukrainians for choosing a pro-Western president instead of the Russian-backed one. With colored revolutions sweeping the CIS, Russia feared that its former satellites were breaking away for good. So it needed a way to get them back, and punishing them economically would be the best way.

The entire episode is true. It was political because Belarus didn’t get its price hike until after its presidential election. However, the fact that it is receiving a price hike changes and transfer of ownership of the transit lines changes everything completely.

1) Russia is no longer seeking state partners who want to cozy up to the Kremlin in exchange for lower gas prices. The democratic process — and as shown by colored revolutions, the falsified democratic process — is simply too unreliable. It wants total domination. Therefore, by using its energy dominance, it will continue to bully neighboring government’s like Ukraine and Belarus out of their national assets; the most important being pipelines. Rather than continued political integration, it will be a forced economic integration that would by necessity lead to the former. It’s exactly what the Russian leadership and many of its people have been preparing and wanting for years — a neo-Soviet based once again on Russian hegemony and power. Countries like Ukraine and Belarus might not stand a chance.

2) Russia is securing its own future by securing the pipelines. The fact that Ukraine and Belarus can resist Russian hegemony over gas is unacceptable to the Kremlin. It is therefore necessary to secure all pipelines so as to ensure that its gas can always reach its markets and the government can always be awash in energy money. The Russian line on this is that this security will mean that Europe will not have to worry about supply disruptions, but alternatively it would mean that an increasingly powerful Russia would not halt in its attempts to force ever-higher prices on European consumers. Because who controls all the gas and all the means of transportation for it? You know who.

This brings us all back to the last frontier: the European Union. A powerful Russia with complete control of the vast majority of energy sources for Europe is a threat to the Western democratic world. Gazprom is already looking into buying up Britain’s natural gas pipelines, prompting a review of such a move by the British government. With the way things are going, I doubt any British government would be dumb enough to let that happen. The real question is if the Russian government will have the cojones to stand up from bullying its developing neighbors to staring down a giant like Britain. It just may.

Europe needs to find a way to increase its energy security quickly — before its too late. The only way to effectively engage Russia and secure supplies is to develop a unified approach. However, the EU’s underdeveloped and inhibiting institutions would not allow for this to happen in a reasonable amount of time. The question is not just about whether or not people will be able to heat their homes in the winter. It’s about total economic dependence on Russian hegemony, which makes it a security question.

The answer may very well be with NATO, the fine-tuned trans-Atlantic security institution that has been looking for a new purpose since the end of the Cold War. NATO members, especially those close to Russia, have been thinking about this for a long time. In fact, it was a major topic of discussion at the NATO Forum on Energy Security Technology early last year.

At a major conference in Prague on energy security, Poland calls for NATO to serve as the basis of a new Western energy alliance to respond to future energy crises.

PRAGUE, 24 February 2006 (RFE/RL) — One of the largest conferences to date to look at how to assure Western energy supplies in an increasingly uncertain security environment wrapped up in Prague today.

The forum, which brought together officials and experts from 32 countries, reflects the growing concern felt by producers and consumers alike at the vulnerability of energy supplies. The regular sabotage of oil pipelines in Iraq has demonstrated how supplies can be disrupted at source, while Russia’s decision in the New Year to cut off gas supplies to Ukraine showed that politics, and not just war, can stop the flow of energy — and that countries not even involved in the dispute can be affected.

When Moscow briefly reduced gas supplies in the pipeline that goes to Ukraine and on to Western Europe, consumers from Poland to Italy felt the effects.

Kevin Rosner, the co-director of the conference, says the “issue of energy security, however you define it, ÄwhetherÅ from a producer or consumer standpoint, is in many, many cases the most important national security issue facing both alliance members ÄandÅ partners.”

All For One, And One For All?

Speaking in a personal capacity, Rosner says he feels the trans-Atlantic alliance must get involved in trying to help stabilize future energy supplies, and believes it could play a critical role in doing so. “NATO’s strength???????is the fact that it is a consultative body,” Rosner says.

One of the subjects under discussion at the conference was a proposal to create a new alliance committing NATO and EU members to act in concert “in the face of any energy threat provoked by either a cut or a diminution of supply sources that may occur because of natural disasters, disruption of wide distribution and supply systems, or political decisions by suppliers.”

Polish Deputy Minister of Economy Piotr Naimski, whose government put forward the proposal, said Warsaw would like to see such an alliance oblige the parties to help each other during an energy crisis just as they might in a time of military crisis, on a “all for one, one for all” principle.

It will also be the position of the United States government to lead discussion within NATO about transforming the organization to deal with energy security. The U.S. Senate unanimously passed Senator Lugar’s resolution calling for such action last June. The result is that the United States is backing up Europe once again from a potential Russian threat. However, it also means that the United States is backing up some new faces as well.

Those most central to the gas crisis, such as Poland, and potential NATO members such as Ukraine and Georgia (who also underwent a heavy gas price increase), will fall under NATO’s wing. That means that if Georgia were to join NATO, as it definitely wants to do, any disruption of energy supplies by Russia, who has been hostile with Tblisi’s government for years, would result in action by the entire alliance. The result? Either NATO falls apart, or Russia is isolated in its entirety and must accept its role as a reliable supplier of energy supplies.

The danger is there. President Putin is looking fifty years into the future, and if Europe doesn’t act, Russia will be a super power based on its energy dominance alone. The last time that happened, millions of people died and nearly half the world was enslaved under communism. Now the same kind of former KGB powers are at work to make that a reality again. Just listen to Poland. They lived it and they’re saying the same thing right now. If a solution isn’t found, then indeed it is going to be a very cold winter for a very long time.