Participants in the "Ukrainian Bacon 2004" Festival in October 2004 assembled a gigantic 9-meter bacon sandwich, which they shared with their fellow festival-goers.
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Displays of Neighborly Affection
// Relations Between the Ex-Soviet Republics in 2006
A year before the 15-year anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) "a form of civilized divorce." The past year has shown to what degree Russia and the former Soviet republics have gone their separate ways. Four of the republics consider Moscow an outright enemy, while the rest of them are looking for an escape from Russia's watchful eye.
Resistance
Last year was a turning point in relations between Russia and Ukraine. The year started off with a gas war: on January 1, 2006 Russian gas giant Gazprom shut off gas supplies to Ukrainian consumers. The dispute was resolved by January 4, and the median price of gas delivered to Ukraine was fixed at $95. Simultaneously with the gas war, however, all of the other simmering conflicts between the two countries flared up, including those concerning the status of the Black Sea Fleet, lighthouses in the Crimea, and deliveries of Ukrainian agricultural products. The extraordinary level of tension coincided with the approach of parliamentary elections in Ukraine, in which Russia unambiguously supported Viktor Yanukovych's opposition Party of Regions and clearly hoped that its sanctions on Ukraine would break the back of the popularity enjoyed by Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko and his allies.
The victory won by the Party of Regions quickly changed the tone of relations between Kiev and Moscow. The Kremlin ceased its attacks on Ukraine, and Prime Minister Yanukovych is now a frequent visitor to Russia who regularly competes with Ukrainian rada [parliamentary] speaker Alexander Moroz for the title of "Moscow's best friend."
Nevertheless, it cannot really be said that Russia has finally gotten an obedient government in Kiev. The majority of the pro-Russian campaign slogans spouted by Viktor Yanukovych have remained nothing more than empty phrases. Mr. Yanukovych recently made a landmark visit the United States that was calculated to demonstrate that he is an independent politician, not a puppet of Moscow. Kiev has also confirmed that it intends to fight for lower gas prices and plans to cooperate with the other countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) that are dissatisfied with Gazprom's actions.
In the last year, Moldova set a record for political flexibility. At the beginning of 2006, relations between Chisinau and Moscow were at their nadir: among the countries of the Soviet Union, Moldova was competing with Georgia for the dubious honor of being considered public enemy number one by Moscow. The low point in the relations between Moscow and Chisinau was occasioned by the new customs regime introduced by Moldova and Ukraine for goods crossing the border between Transdniestr, a breakaway self-proclaimed republic of Moldova, and Ukraine. In Tiraspol and Moscow, the new regime, which was aimed at weakening the government of Transdniestr President Igor Smirnov, was derided as an "economic blockade." The Russian authorities not only came out in full support of Tiraspol but even slapped sanctions on Moldova. Russia's top health authority, Gennady Onishchenko, declared a ban on the import of Moldovan wine to Russia, and Gazprom announced that the price paid by Moldova for its gas would be raised from $110 to $160 per thousand cubic meters.
Chisinau's long-suffering attempts to resolve the conflict have yet to bear fruit. Not long ago, Moldavian President Vladimir Voronin was refused an invitation to visit Moscow for several months in a row. Eventually Mr. Voronin, who managed to endure the wait without giving in to the temptation of harsh words, was rewarded for his forbearance with a meeting with Vladimir Putin in August.
However, Mr. Voronin had not yet faced the last test of his patience. Chisinau uttered barely a murmur as a referendum on independence, which was basically a popularity contest between Russia and Moldova in which Moldova was seriously overmatched, was held in Transdniestr last fall. Afterwards, at the CIS summit in November, the Russian president finally pronounced forgiveness for Chisinau and decreed that, thanks to President Voronin's exemplary behavior, Moldavian wine would once again be allowed into the Russian market. However, the rosy mood is likely to be short-lived: Moldova remains a member of the GUAM (Georgia-Ukraine-Azerbaijan-Moldova) alliance and still hopes to return Transdniestr to the fold. In addition, Moldova's neighbor Romania entered the EU at the beginning of this year, and similar European protection would give Moldova's confidence a boost.
A turning point also came last year in the relations between Russia and Belarus, when Gazprom undertook to resolve its problem with Belarus once and for all by issuing an ultimatum to Alexander Lukashenko demanding that Beltransgaz be sold to the Russian gas giant for a token sum. The Belarussian president, conscious that he would lose his ace in the hole if he were to give in to Moscow's demand, refused. Mr. Lukashenko's refusal was a sign of fundamentally changing times in the history of his relationship with Moscow: the former close ally has become something akin to an enemy of the Kremlin.
However, Russia maintained its loyal relations with President Lukashenko right up until the Belarussian presidential elections in March of 2006. While the West pilloried Mr. Lukashenko's regime for trampling on democratic freedoms, a contingent of observers from the CIS, organized by Moscow, was the only group to declare the elections legitimate. It was not until after the elections were over, when the image of the "batka" (Mr. Lukashenko's preferred nickname, which means "little father") was irretrievably tarnished in the eyes of the West and Minsk was almost completely isolated, that Moscow launched its attack. Right before Mr. Lukashenko was sworn in for his third term, Gazprom announced a new price for its Belarussian client: instead of $46 per thousand cubic meters of gas, Minsk would now be required to pay $200.
Faced with being deprived of the preferential price enjoyed by his country for Russian gas, on which hung the entire "Belarussian economic miracle," Alexander Lukashenko was initially at a loss. He did not appear in public for several days after the elections, and it was whispered in Minsk that the president was seriously ill. However, Mr. Lukashenko eventually decided to fight back, and he spent the remainder of the year attempting to show the Kremlin that he can survive without Russian help. He faced down more ultimatums from Moscow and flatly refused to transfer control of Belarus's network of gas pipelines to Gazprom. In September, in response to the Kremlin's decision to completely halt subsidies for the Belarussian economy, Mr. Lukashenko decided to go for broke and threatened to quit the loose federation that exists between the two countries if Moscow raised the price of gas.
Then he began to search for new partners. First he hailed China as a strategic partner before moving on to attempt to ingratiate himself with the European Community by claiming to admire Viktor Yushchenko and expressing a wish to create a unified state with Ukraine. He also asked Azeri President Ilham Aliev to help Belarus avoid Russia's interference by supplying gas and oil to Belarus through Ukraine.
However, Mr. Lukashenko's search for allies did not relieve Belarus of the necessity of seeking a compromise with Gazprom. Vladimir Putin insisted that Belarus would be required to pay the market price for gas in 2007, but he also mentioned that the price hike could be included in the price of Beltransgaz, whose value was estimated by the Dutch bank AVN Amro to be $3.5 billion. In response, Alexander Lukashenko has already warned Belarussian companies to be prepared to pay $120 per thousand cubic meters for gas.
The scuffle will continue throughout this year, and not only over gas. It is clear that the plan to create a unified state with Russia and Ukraine is already dead and buried, and the longevity of the Lukashenko regime is in question. The most severe trials still lie ahead for Minsk in the new year.
Thus far, Azerbaijan has always had a reputation as one of Moscow's most cautious partners in the CIS. The Azeri government has tried not to quarrel with Russia, but it has also cultivated the image of a pro-Western state by joining the GUAM alliance and building the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan gas pipeline, much to Moscow's displeasure. The pipeline was finally opened in 2006, and since then Azerbaijan has been behaving more independently than ever.
The Baku authorities, despite pressure from Moscow, do not support Russia's sanctions against Georgia. At the end of 2006, Gazprom threatened to raise the price of gas for Azerbaijan from $110 to $230 per thousand cubic meters if Baku did not toe the line on Russia's energy policies, but Azerbaijan has blithely ignored Moscow's bellicose mood. Ilham Aliyev also snubbed the Kremlin by agreeing to supply electrical energy to Georgia and Iran for this winter, and then he charged his government with calculating the outcome of refusing to transport gas through Russian territory via the Baku-Novorossisk pipeline. The next logical step on Mr. Aliyev's current course may be to bring Azerbaijan into the orbit of NATO.
At the beginning of 2006, Armenia had the reputation of being Russia's most important ally in the Southern Caucasus. Nevertheless, Yerevan did once attempt to demonstrate its readiness to rebel against Moscow's will, but the mood did not last long.
Gazprom's announcement last year that Armenia would be required to pay the market price for gas outraged Yerevan. The Armenian authorities maintained that, as a special friend of Moscow, Armenia should receive a discount. The Kremlin refused, and the Russian government consequently demanded that Armenia sell a fifth of the energy conglomerate Razdanskaya TES and the country's entire gas transit network to Russia for $140 million: an amount that would have kept Armenia supplied with gas at the old price for only a year.
Yerevan was nudged towards disobedience by its second major partner, Tehran. The Iranians financed the Razdanskaya thermoelectric power plant and the Iran-Armenia gas pipeline, and they were annoyed by Russia's acquisitive overtures. Nevertheless, Russia put the screws to Yerevan until Gazprom was allowed to take control of the energy company Armrosgazprom and to commit itself to investing around $570 million in the Armenian economy before 2009. The next acquisition in the works is a bid by Russian Railways to take over the Armenian rail network in 2007. However, it is not a foregone conclusion that the Armenian authorities will again roll over at Moscow's command. The Armenian parliament has already proposed to demand payment from Russia for its airbase in Gyumri, although Armenian President Robert Kocharian so far has not been willing to risk raising his voice against the Kremlin.
No country had such officially promising relations with Russia in the last year as Kazakhstan, whose presidents met with each other no fewer than ten times in 2006. However, last year's amiable relationship between Vladimir Putin and Nursultan Nazarbayev pales somewhat in comparison to their near-unanimity the year before, when they were united against a common enemy: the so-called "color revolutions" in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan. Once that threat was gone, it turned out that the future paths of Moscow and Astana are destined to diverge as Kazakhstan, busy massing its economic might, begins to pursue politics more and more independently of Russia.
In the last year, energy-rich Kazakhstan has been a pilgrimage site for important Western guests: European energy commissioner Andreas Pibalgs and American vice president Dick Cheney both visited the country and urged Nursultan Nazarbayev to bypass Russia by exporting Kazakh oil via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. Astana eventually agreed.
Another piece of unpleasant news for Moscow was an increase in the price of Kazakh gas. Following Gazprom's example, Nursultan Nazarbayev has begun to sell his gas to Russia at the market price.
Finally, at the end of last year Moscow and Astana clashed over President Nazarbayev's expressed desire to reform the CIS. He proposed to make the organization more effective by cutting back the numbers of areas in which its members are expected to coordinate their efforts and by restricting membership in the CIS to countries that are prepared to adopt the new arrangements. Russia quickly squelched Astana's reforming fervor, but the struggle will continue in 2007 as Kazakhstan becomes increasingly eager to flex its muscles in the post-Soviet world.
With regard to Kyrgyzstan, the most restless country in Central Asia, this year has been fraught with difficulties for Russia. At the beginning of 2006, acting on Moscow's advice, Bishkek demanded an increase from $3 million to $200 million in the annual rent that the United States pays for its Ganci airbase. Washington refused, but the question of payment for the base remained on the negotiating table, and for several months Bishkek found itself caught between the US, which demanded a lower price, and Russia, which wanted an end to the American military presence in Kyrgyzstan. Eventually, at the end of July, the US and Kyrgyzstan agreed that Washington would pay $150 million in installments for use of the base. Moscow was incensed.
In the fall, the Kremlin gave full rein to its dissatisfaction with Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev. First, the Russian prosecutor general's office demanded that its Kyrgyz colleagues gave an explanation for London-based billionaire Boris Berezovsky's visit to Kyrgyzstan. Then, when Kyrgyzstan faced the prospect of another revolution, Russian state-owned television channels instituted a near-blackout of the authorities and gave time instead to opposition politicians. The situation was eventually tamed, but uncertainty remains both in Kyrgyz politics and in relations between Bishkek and Moscow.
In 2005, Uzbekistan performed an epic and limber about-face: after the Andijan incident in May of that year, Uzbek President Islam Karimov simultaneously made himself a pariah in the West and was welcomed into Russia's embrace. Throughout 2006, Moscow and Tashkent drew together along a carefully-drawn path: following Moscow's orders, Islam Karimov signed a cooperation agreement with Russia that gave him political security, and he also led his country into the Eurasian Economic Community and the Collective Security Treaty Organization. In addition, many Russian bureaucrats and businessmen live in Uzbekistan, and Tashkent has promised to cut them deals on acquisitions of Uzbekistan's unprivatized strategic enterprises.
But not everything has gone off without a hitch. Many profitable deals involving Russian capital have been stalled by bureaucratic heel-dragging, meaning that, thanks to petty local bureaucrats, the Russian re-conquest of Uzbekistan is not yet complete.
Thanks to the peculiar personality of its president, Saparmurat Niyazov, and his certainty that his enormous gas reserves allow him to take certain liberties, Turkmenistan has always stood apart from the other members of the CIS. Last year in Ashgabat Turkmenbashi carried on negotiations concerning increased gas supplies – in which, according to the opinions of many experts, he offered the same gas to different clients. He signed an agreement with Gazprom to sell gas to Russia for $100 per thousand cubic meters instead of $44, and then he turned around and concluded a deal with China for a much lower price, apparently with the express purpose of creating competition for Russia. Previously, much of Turkmenistan's gas has been bought by Iran and Ukraine, but this year the list was expanded to include Pakistan as well. There is no proof, however, that Turkmenistan's gas reserves will be enough to satisfy all comers.
Both Moscow and Beijing conceptualize their contracts with Ashgabat in political terms: the two countries signed them mainly with the goal of consolidating their influence in the region. When Turkmenbashi came up with the plan to create a navy in the Caspian last year, a whimsy that would be impossible to fulfill without help from abroad, Russia and China set about preparing for a struggle. Though that plan was presumably abandoned when Turkmenbashi died unexpectedly on December 21, 2006, many countries are still hustling for influence in Turkmenistan. For example, the European Union is interested in diversifying its sources of energy, which may mean that its leaders will approach Turkmenistan with a proposal for a trans-Caspian gas pipeline that would deliver gas to Europe without passing through Russia.
Last year was an extremely important one for Tajikistan. The small ex-Soviet republic reelected its president, Emomali Rakhmonov, after a campaign in which Dushanbe expended enormous amounts of effort on, among other things, winning Moscow over to its side. But towards the end of the year, relations between Russian businesses and the Tajik authorities became increasingly complicated. First, Dushanbe announced that it would not permit the Russian company RusAl to participate in the privatization of Tajikistan's aluminum plant. Then Mr. Rakhmonov decided that the Ragunskaya hydroelectric power station would be built without assistance from RusAl. Pakistan is known to have expressed interest in replacing Russia on the project, and Iran and China are also paying increased attention to Tajikistan.
Confrontation
In 2006, Georgia set a record for plumbing the depths of post-Soviet relations with Russia.
The harbinger of bad times to come in Russian-Georgian relations was a series of explosions on two branches of the gas pipeline from Mozdok to Tbilisi, as a result of which gas supplies to Georgia and Armenia were interrupted. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili blamed Russia.
Moscow struck back with a ban on the import of Georgian wine and Borjomi mineral water into Russia, a provocation that the Georgian authorities were all too happy to use as a pretext to attempt to force Russia to withdraw its peacekeepers from South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The Georgian parliament has already adopted several resolutions declaring the present of the peacekeepers illegal, but they have yet to be withdrawn.
The real escalation of tensions began in the summer. In the Stavropol region, the Russian army undertook military exercises called "The Caucasian Frontier 2006" that were designed to prepare troops to support the Russian peacekeepers in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Meanwhile, in Georgia's Kodori Gorge, rebel commander Emzar Kvitsiani staged a revolt against the Georgian authorities. The government in Tbilisi, convinced that the two events were related, launched a wave of arrests of opposition members in what the authorities claimed was an attempt to thwart a supposed coup.
In September Georgia won an important victory when NATO announced that it would begin an "intensive dialog" with Tbilisi, a step that is widely understood as a tacit invitation to join the alliance. The next day Mikheil Saakashvili, in a speech to the United Nations, accused Russia of the "annexation" and "criminal occupation" of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Soon after that another series of arrests took place in Tbilisi, this time of four Russian intelligence agents whom the Georgian government accused of espionage and participation in planning a coup.
It is unclear exactly which one of these three events provoked Moscow's ferocious reaction, but in any case the magnitude of the fusillade launched against Georgia was colossal. Russia severed all air, automobile, sea, and rail links with its Caucasian neighbor. All postal communications between the two countries were halted, and monetary transfers were banned. Even more scandalous was the anti-Georgian campaign unleashed by Moscow. The Federal Migration Service began to detain and deport Georgian citizens, in the course of which three people died in official custody. Tbilisi promptly accused Russia of genocide and threatened to bring the case before the International Court of Justice.
Towards the end of the year, Russian and Tbilisi had a chance to dispel some of the tension when Mikheil Saakashvili fired Irakli Okruashvili, the chief hawk in his administration. Soon afterwards, the Russian and Georgian presidents met at the CIS summit in Minsk for the first time after a long hiatus. However, no breakthroughs were made, and the fight appears certain to drag on, particularly since the price of gas for Georgia was raised to $230 per thousand cubic meters at the beginning of the year.
Latvia has always been able to boast of the dubious distinction of having terrible relations with Russia, even for a Baltic country, and last year was no exception. Some notable events included the decision by Rospotrebnadzor to ban the import of Latvian sprats to Russia, as well as Russia's opposition to the candidacy of Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga for the position of United Nations general secretary. Ms. Freiberga repaid Moscow for its efforts with a thinly-veiled barb of her own: before the November NATO summit in Riga, Ms. Freiberga said that "if Martians attack us, I believe that NATO will react immediately and will take all necessary steps to organize our defenses," a comment that clearly refers to Russia. "It seems to me that Russia and the Russians do not resemble extraterrestrials," replied Russian Defense Minister Sergei Lavrov a few days later.
The relationship between Russia and Estonia has also been stagnant at a low point over the last year. After the Estonian parliament accused Russia of having territorial aspirations in 2005 and Vladimir Putin subsequently withdrew his signature from a border treaty, relations between the two countries could hardly be any worse.
In 2006, a former journalist for Radio Free Europe, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, became Estonia's president – and the first leader of the country's post-WWII government who does not speak Russian. At the end of that year Ants Laaneots, the new head of the state committee on defense, provoked a scandal by saying that Russia is an "unfriendly country" and Estonia's "biggest security problem."
Lithuania and Russia also endured fairly stormy relations over the last year. In May the countries of the Baltics and the Black Sea region held a summit in Vilnius attended by the leaders of many countries in Eastern Europe and the CIS who are united in opposition to Moscow's heavy hand. It was at this summit that US vice president Dick Cheney gave the famous speech that was interpreted by Moscow as a rekindling of the Cold War. Moscow also endured criticism from Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus, who called on the countries of the European Community to create a unified front against the construction of the Northern European gas pipeline. In response, Gazprom quickly hiked the gas price for Lithuania from $105 to $135 per thousand cubic meters.
Another casualty of the crisis in relations between Vilnius and Moscow was the government of Algirdas Brazauskas, whose cabinet was forced to resign after several ministers from the Labor Party, headed by Russian-born millionaire Viktor Uspassky, were accused of having ties to Russian intelligence services.
The biggest flare-up of tension, however, came near the end of last year. Soon after the Lithuanian authorities sold the Mazeikiu nafta oil refinery to the Polish company Orlen, despite interest expressed by Russian companies in buying it first, Russia shut off oil supplies to the plant, claiming that the Druzhba pipeline (whose name, ironically enough, means "friendship") was in need of repairs. The Lithuanian government and the European Commission called the repairs "politically motivated," and the Lithuanian Ministry of Internal Affairs even threatened to begin "repairs" on the railroad that links Russia with its Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad. So once again, the battle will continue in the new year.
Mikhail Zygar
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