Tag Archives: Energy and Geopolitics

Russia in Global Politics [part 1/2]: “How post-’91 reconstruction failed.” My Sofia IGA highlight talk

It was honored to give the Highlight lecture at the IGA Conference (Institute for Global Analytics) in Sofia, Bulgaria, invited by IGA and the Polish Embassy. on 27 October. My special thanks to Dr. Rumena Filoipva, founder and director of IGA.

I divided the topic into two key aspects:

  1. How did Russia end up at war with Ukraine & West?
    That is, how did 20 years of Russian reform & reconstruction fail after the USSR collapsed in 1991.
    I focused on two aspects of that once-hopeful history:
    i) the geopolitical and ii) the economic histories.
    The second aspect (this will be in a following YouTube and GlobalBarrel.com post):
  2. What is today the USA’s (i.e., the Trump administration’s) Russia strategy? This focused on two aspects:
    i) the Ukraine war, and ii) the USA’s present energy geostrategy under the Trump administration. That is, “USA Energy Dominance,” which is presently focused on both Iran and quite strongly on Russia, but ultimately all this, including its policy to Venezuela and to W. Hemisphere oil, to OPEC, etc, is all is vs China.
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My Al Jazeera: Finland, the Baltics & Poland prepared well for Gazprom’s cutoff. Germany & Austria did the opposite, putting EU at risk.

ABOVE is English audio — BELOW is Arabic video. Recorded live; Al Jazeera, 21 May 2022.

I told Al Jazeera that Finland is well prepared, having worked since 2017 with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – the Baltic states – and with Poland to connect them all together with new pipelines, also to access LNG, storage and soon, new supplies from Norway.

Finland has also rented a regasification ship, from a US firm, to receive 5 billion cubic meters per year of LNG, whch will be plenty to supply both itself and Estonia in the wake of Putin cutting off Gazprom supplies of natural gas. Finland refuses, as did Poland too, to pay Moscow in rubles and so are being punished by Putin.

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My Nexus TV: Sanctions hobble Putin; we agreed in London, Berlin, Kyiv & Moscow | Me: Putin must sell oil/gas at any price; they’ll be sanctioned too

My comments start at timestamp 15:20.

TRT’s Nexus with Matthew Moore, was recorded 30 April 2021, from London.

My fellow guests were:

  • Patrick Boyle, Professor of Finance at Kings College — London, UK
  • Andrii Dligach, Co-Founder of the Centre for Economic Recovery — Kyiv, Ukraine
  • Maxum Bouev, Vice Rector at the New Economic School — Moscow, Russia
  • Myself, Thomas O’Donnell, Energy and Geopolitical Analyst, also teaching in — Berlin, Germany

My further comment: Russian oil can perfectly well be sanctioned now by Europe, and they should do it. It would deprive Putin’s regime of his main remaining source of income. Natural gas will be more difficult, but it is also possible to be sanctoned. It shoudl be done.

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Could Nord Stream 2 be axed? My guest appearance on Roundtable -TRT TV, London

This 10 February half-hour roundtable on TRT Television, London looked at the possibility of Nord Stream 2 being stopped by US sanctions. My thanks to host David Foster for the invite.

Today is 20 February, and I should add that since this was recorded, the Biden-Harris-Blinken administration has surprised Congress by sanctioning significantly fewer ships than it expected to be sanctioned for assisting Gazprom to lay pipe in Danish and German waters.

This White House attempt to generate goodwill with Berlin and with Merkel’s ruling coalition is generating bipartisan objections in Congress. Upcoming posts will analyze this development . Tom O’D. Below is the text from TRT network’s promotion of the show. and guests’ names and affiliations.

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