Resources Archive

On May 8, the Czech Republic hosted a long-awaited Nabucco Summit under the auspices of its European Union (EU) presidency. Notably, the meeting convened just as the Bulgarian government finalized its participation in Russia’s competing South Stream pipeline. A little-noticed element of the negotiations in Moscow, however, was Bulgaria’s effort to link its participation in South Stream with Russian financing for a domestic nuclear power program. Pipeline politics may generate headlines, but Bulgarian officials expect nuclear power to generate most of their future electricity. And Bulgaria’s South Stream agreement demonstrates the perverse incentives which arise when EU energy security and […]

During a three-day visit to Japan last week, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin pushed commercial deals and received an honorary degree from Tokyo University for his efforts to improve Russian-Japanese ties (as well as for his knowledge of judo, in which he holds a black belt). But as expected, the Russian and Japanese governments made little progress in resolving their territorial dispute over four islands that Russia seized from Japan at the end of World War II. The dispute over the islands — the Russians call them the Southern Kurils, while the Japanese refer to them as their Northern Territories […]