russia flexes its muscles again

From the excellent eureferendum blog -

They say it is because Belarus has not been keeping the payments up and that is almost certainly true up to a point. After all, you sign a contract, you stick to it. But somehow, none of this mattered as long as the country and its ineffable leader, Alexander Lukashenka, stuck to a strictly pro-Russian line. Now that he has become a little unreliable in his pronouncements, contracts become very important.

As things stand Gazprom is all set to cut supplies to Belarus by 45 per cent as of today. Of course, there is a slightly bigger problem of the pipe that runs through the country and delivers about 20 per cent of the gas to Western Europe. Will Belarus do what Ukraine did and swore that it did not, that is, skim some of those supplies for their own purpose?

Whenever this happens there are calls across Western Europe to diversify the energy supplies so we do not have to rely on Russia, which is becoming more and more unpredictable in her behaviour.

More at http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2007/08/gazprom-is-at-it-again.html

Should continue to concentrate minds in western Europe.