In practice, this is a setback for the United States, who will find it next to impossible to establish a new base in Central Asia once the lease on the Manas airbase in Kyrgyzstan expires in 2014, and a boost to Russia who, as a CSTO member state, has a veto on the construction of future bases.

The decision was taken at a meeting of all seven CSTO members – Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Announcing the news, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev told reporters that:

“An accord has been reached to coordinate the deployment, in the territory of the CSTO states, of military infrastructure facilities belonging to non-CSTO states.

In order to deploy military bases of a third country in the territory of the CSTO member-states, it is necessary to obtain the official consent of all its members.”

The move was swiftly followed, in an official statement, by criticism NATO-led interventions, particularly in Libya and Afghanistan, and condemnation of the United States proposals to site a missile shield in Europe.

“The unilateral deployment of strategic missile defense systems by one state or a group of states without due account for the lawful interests of other countries and without extending legally-binding guarantees to the latter may damage international security and strategic stability in Europe and the world as a whole.”

Agreement was also reached on an armanent programme for the CSTO’s rapid re-action force, which may finally become something slightly more than a paper tiger. You can read more about the meeting, including transcripts of all the opening speeches, at the Russian President’s website.

Most interesting, though, was the criticism of the United States and NATO. The sentiments of the strongly worded statement are identical to Russia’s foreign policy positions, and this will do little to dampen criticism that the CSTO is essentially an organisation controlled entirely by Russia.

And it is certainly interesting to see how comfortable the other six member states are in aligning themselves with Russia and agreeing such a strong statement. It seems clear that the US has been squeezed to the sidelines by Russia in the battle for influence in Central Asia.

CSTO slams door on US bases in Central Asia is a post from: Siberian Light

The news comes almost immediately after a customs and trade monitoring agreement between Russia and Georgia which had been holding up Russian accession for years.

Only two hurdles now remain between Russia and full WTO membership – the Ministerial Conference, attended by representatives of each member state, must approve Russian accession at its meeting of 15-17 December, and then Russia itself must ratify the decision by 15 June 2012.

Under the terms of the deal Russia will have to make a number of changes. Most notably, it will have to cut import tariffs on a wide range of goods – its 2011 average import tariff ceiling of 10% will be cut by more than a fifth, to a maximum of 7.8% – and eliminate a number of state subsidies. The full terms of the deal can be found in the announcement on the WTO website.

As you would expect, the analysts are all over this news. And, as you’d expect, reaction is mixed. For example, the Wall Street Journal thinks that it will benefit Russia’s economy and – more importantly – increase the rule of law in Russia. Bloomburg, on the other hand, chooses to focus on the negative, noting that although Russian industry will get a boost from WTO membership, it will also annoy everyone else by not playing by the rules.

Global reaction has been pretty positive, though, on the whole. US President Barack Obama told reporters that “Russia’s WTO accession would be yet another important step forward in our reset of relations with Russia, which has been based upon the belief that the United States and Russia share many common interests, even as we disagree on some issues.” His next step will be to recommend that the US Congress repeals the Jackson-Vanik amendment, a Cold War hangover that prevents the US from granting favoured trading nation status to countries that restrict human rights. Whether Congress will do what he asks is another question…

Smaller countries, such as Finland, which is Russia’s third largest export market, have also welcomed the deal.

On a slightly lighter note, the deal will, at a stroke, almost halve the landmass of countries no longer in the WTO – the only holdouts now being countries marked in grey on this map – notably all the Central Asia countries, a few African and Middle Eastern countries and some of the poorer and more troubled parts of Eastern Europe. Oh, and North Korea. Now that’s a club that I’m sure Russia will be happy to be leaving behind.

Russia WTO entry – all but guaranteed is a post from: Siberian Light

His team, near the bottom of the KHL were playing away to Dinamo Minsk and – miraculously – with only 15 seconds to play were only 3-2 behind. In search of an equaliser his team were employing every trick in the book, clean or dirty. So dirty, in fact, that the opposition fans started throwing bottles of water onto the pitch in a hint that Vityaz might want to, well, clean things up a bit.

So, what is a coach to do when his team is so insulted? Go on the offensive, naturally. Nazarov picked up a stick, turned to face the fans and launched a stunning, if entirely ineffective, attack. Repeatedly he raised his stick and brought it crashing down into the general direction of the Minsk fans. Unfortunately for Nazarov, fortunately for the fans, a two meter high sheet of plexiglass was between them – three mighty blows, and Nazarov’s stick broke in half.

Here’s a video of Nazarov’s rampage.

Sadly for Nazarov, although his antics have made him a global media sensation, his passion didn’t influence the outcome of the match. Chekhov played out the final 15 seconds without scoring and went down to their 14th defeat of the season, leaving them in last place in their division.

For his troubles, Nazarov was also handed a two match ban.

Russian hockey coach attacks fans is a post from: Siberian Light

It shows the percentage of people in each country with access to the internet in 2008. Red, the predominant colour, indicates that more than 31% of people in that country have internet access.

I’m fascinated, though, to see that one of the countries in Europe with the least internet penetration is Ukraine, where only marginally over 10% of people have access. Does anyone know why a relatively authoritarian country like Belarus has managed to get more than 1/3rd of its people online, whereas Ukraine has only managed 1/10th? Any thoughts on what this means for the development of political debate and free speech in Ukraine?

Why so little internet in Ukraine? is a post from: Siberian Light

All of Europe gets cut off from crude oil supplies, apparently.

His source is the New York Times, of all places, which has run a story with the headline:

Russian Crude Stops Flowing to Europe

Russian crude oil stopped flowing to Western Europe through a major pipeline across Belarus, officials here and in Europe said.

It isn’t until the fourth paragraph until the NY Times even mention the fact that only Germany, Poland and Ukraine are actually affected by the cutoff. And even then, it’s only in passing.

This isn’t really a criticism of Matthew – the NY Times story is incredibly misleading. But I found it fascinating to see how a little regional spat has turned into a public perception that big, bad Russia is turning off the lights all over Europe.

Update: Now Instapundit has picked up the meme.

How the Belarus oil story has grown is a post from: Siberian Light

• Belarus have slapped a tax on Russian oil transiting Belarus, and siphoning off Transneft’s oil to pay for it.� In response, Transneft have shut off the oil supply to huge chunks of Central Europe.
• Azerbaijan have stopped exporting oil to Russia, after failing to agree a price
• Georgia have signed a deal to buy gas from Turkey, instead of Russia (actually this was late last year, but its always good to get a headstart on New Year’s resolutions…).

Some of these moves are sensible, others aren’t. Either way, though, these moves don’t do Russia a lot of good � as ye reap, so shall ye sow.

(By the way – I’m posting this by phone while on the move, so no links at the moment. I’ll update with links tomorrow, but you can find details of each of these stories on the BBC News website).

Belarus’ decision to slap an oil tax of $45 per tonne on Russian oil transiting through Belarus (mostly en route to Poland and Germany) strikes me as an ill-considered reaction to the already signed deal to increase the rate Belarus pays for Russian gas to the global market rate. Effectively, it seems as though, Belarus have launched their counteroffensive after the war’s decisive battle has been lost. By taking this approach now, Belarus will bear the brunt of German and Polish irritation. And, what will they actually gain?

Azerbaijan’s decision is an odd one, which broke just as I was writing this article. There are conflicting reports as to what has actually happened, with some news agencies reporting that they have cut of oil supplies to Russia, others reporting that they have cut off supplies to Europe that were transiting through Russia. I wonder, though, if it will achieve all that much, other than to make Azerbaijan seem like yet another unreliable supplier of oil in Western European eyes. Things may become clearer by the morning � if so, I’ll post an update.

Georgia’s decision strikes me as much more sensible. Now that Russia is no longer offering massive subsidies on the price of gas, it isn’t an attractive choice of supplier. These days, countries perceive Russia as an unreliable supplier – one prone to using its gas supplies as a weapon. Given this, if a country can find another country willing to supply gas at the same price as Russia, they’d have to be crazy not to switch suppliers. (and in this case, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to discover that Turkey either undercut Russia’s prices, or offered some kind of sweetener to smooth the deal’ progress).

Russia is the biggest loser in this whole debacle. As I mentioned above, they way they’ve handled these price increases – linking them to political threat, and using them to bully countries into selling energy assets for a song – has created a perception among their customers – current and future – that they are an unreliable, unprincipled and bullying business partner.

Russia may well earn more per cubic meter of gas sold than it did last year, but if it is not careful, it may well find that is has less and less customers for its gas, driving down overall income. At the same time it will have lost friends around the globe, making its geopolitical aims that much harder to achieve.

Update: Tim comments below that “Russia is playing an exceptionally strong hand very very badly”.

This mornings newspapers show just how badly Russia has handled things, and how poor its image is in European capitals.� Splashed all over the front page of the (London) Times in big bold type is the headline “Russia turns off Europe’s oil supply“.

(While technically, the headline is correct – Russian firm Transneft turned off the oil – I’m more inclined to pin the blame on Belarus.� They imposed a ludicrously large tax on Russian oil transported through Belarussian pipelines and, when Transneft didn’t pay, began to siphon off oil in lieu of payment.� True, this was done in response to the way Russia imposed huge gas price increases on Belarus but, as I’ve explained above, I don’t think this was a particularly sensible reaction by Belarus).

Oil wars is a post from: Siberian Light

Under the terms of the deal, Belarus will pay $100 per thousand cubic metres this year, but the price will steadily rise until it reaches around $250 per thousand cubic metres in 2011.� This will bring prices into line with the current market rate.

Belarus also – reluctantly – agreed to sell half of their gas distribution network to Gazprom for $2.5 billion.� Not such a great deal when you consider they originally valued the network at $16 billion.� The decision to sell a 50% stake was odd too – usually stakes of 49% or 51% are sold, to give someone overall control.� I’m at a loss to explain this aspect of the deal.�

As you can imagine – the Belarussian Prime Minister wasn’t happy:

“As you know, 60 percent of the Belarusian people are victims of Chernobyl [nuclear disaster]. So, we have to go to these victims of Chornobyl, we have to go to the elderly and explain to them that the price for gas has been raised twice more than we expected.”

So, don’t expect relations between Russia and�Belarus to be quite as cosy as they have been over the past few years.�

But there is one small upside�- Russia’s main gas ‘weapon’ in recent years has been the threat of ending gas subsidies to former Soviet states.� Once Belarus begins paying market rates, the Russian government will lose one of its main foreign policy levers.�

Belarus reaches last minute deal with Russia over gas price is a post from: Siberian Light

Although there has been no official announement yet on the outcome of the talks,�Reuters are reporting that the talks went so badly that Lukashenko decided to skip the evening’s planned entertainment:�

He returned to Minsk, skipping a Kremlin dinner and a planned trip to an ice-hockey match.

Presumably, he didn’t get to do any Christmas shopping, either. �

Anyway, how did this dispute come about?� Russia are insisting that Belarus pays for its gas supplies at the full market rate, which would be more than double, and possibly even four times as much as Belarus currently pays.� Russia, in its generosity has agreed to waive the increase, but only if Belarus agrees to sell its gas distribution network, Beltransgas, for $4 billion.�

The problem is, Belarus doesn’t want to sell one of its�prize assets, which it values at closer to $16 billion.

Where this leaves the prospect of political union between Russia and Belarus, I don’t know.�

It should, though,�act as a warning to those authoritarian leaders who want to cosy up to Russia.� Freindship means very little to the Kremlin when it comes to selling gas these days.

Belarus-Russia relations sour over gas deal is a post from: Siberian Light

Despite an international arms embargo affecting both government and rebel forces, it appears that military equipment from the Former Soviet Union is still managing to make its way into the Ivory Coast, the Telegraph reports:

Gen Fall, who commands 6,000 troops, said there was evidence to suggest that the vehicles, which had been ordered by Ivory Coast’s army and brought in on a ship flying a Danish flag, had come from Russia. He urged that an official protest should be lodged.

The apparent violation of the embargo is not the only such example. In a separate document, Gen Fall reported that a man "speaking Russian on his mobile phone" was seen working on government-owned aircraft at Abidjan airport, with three other engineers.

And on another occasion five men of "East European origin" were seen inspecting military aircraft.

I’d say that there is a pretty strong chance this equipment came in with, if not the official sanction of an FSU state, then a nod and a wink.  Whether it came originally from Belarus or Russia isn’t certain, although I’d say Belarus is certainly a strong candidate even though, as a landlocked country it would have to ship its wares through a foreign port (and perhaps this explains the Danish ship coming from a Russian port…).   

Although there is an embargo in place, if a government supplying arms (lets say it is the aforementioned Belarus – for the sake of convenience, of course, and not at all to imply that they are the supplier in question) can circumvent that embargo it can realise significant benefits – both short and long term.

Many African countries, although they have the money to buy an air-force in the first place, lack the technical expertise or the infrastructure to maintain it.  They lack the ability to manufacture spare parts, they lack technicians and, most importantly, they lack the trained pilots to turn an unwieldy hunk of metal into an effective airborne killing machine.  So usually, whenever an African country buys an aircraft from a FSU state, they buy a ‘care package’ to go with it, including a technical support staff and pilots.  (This isn’t to say that African states have no technicians or pilots at all, just that their own are usually less well trained.  Imported expertise, although costlier, is far more proficient, and therefore more cost-effective).

The Ivory Coast will most likely have purchased one of these ‘care packages’ from Belarus, and will not be able to effectively operate their air force without outside support.  For Belarus, even though there is now an embargo, there are strong incentives to continue this support, even if it means they have to do so in a manner that is technically illegal.  Belarus, if it can prove its worth as a reliable supplier that continues to maintain its equipment, even in a demanding environment (i.e. an illegal one), will comprehensively demonstrate its reliability as a supplier.  Belarus will be hoping that Ivory Coast will, after the embargo is over, make them their ‘supplier of choice’ and thus winning them contracts worth tens (perhaps hundreds) of millions of dollars.  And the benefits wouldn’t just include a relationship with Ivory Coast either – in fact, the Ivory Coast are small fry compared to the potential market out there.  There are plenty of other African governments in the market for an air-force, and many of these governments will also be concerned that they too might one day find themselves under an embargo.  These governments will hopefully be so impressed by Belarus’ integrity, and dedication to fulfilling its obligations, that they too will make Belarus their first port of call when seeking out their next airborne killing machine. 

Plus, of course, there is plenty of money to be made in the short-term from sanctions busting…

(Hat tip to Bill Roggio of Winds of Change for pointing me in the direction of the original Telegraph article).

Belarus, Russia involved in Ivory Coast sanctions busting? is a post from: Siberian Light

Pavel Felgenhauer has been talking to an unidentified but "informed" source in the Kremlin:

Putin and Lukashenko apparently
agreed on a joint strategy to prevent popular democratic revolutions
from overthrowing their regimes. The Kremlin insider, speaking on
condition of anonymity, told me that a tentative agreement has been
reached that would drastically speed up the process of merging Russia
and Belarus into a bastion opposing Western-sponsored democratic change.

In a year or so, a referendum
will be held in Russia and Belarus to merge the two nations. The
Russian Constitution will be rewritten, and the State Duma will be
disbanded to create a new joint parliament. The countries’ defense and
foreign ministries will be merged. Putin will be re-elected sometime in
2007 for seven years to be president of the new joint nation with
Lukashenko as vice president. Such a combination would solve the
so-called problem of 2008, the need to replace Putin, whose second and
last term as president under the current Constitution will soon end.
Lukashenko will run with Putin as vice president, assured that the
Kremlin will be his after Putin’s seven-year term ends.

So, do I think Putin and Lukashenko will run for election in 2007 on a joint ticket?  Well, probably not.  But, maybe.  Both men – particularly Lukashenko – are running scared of a potential democratic revolution which could leave them out in the cold.  Sometimes regimes that seem calm on the surface have hidden depths which seeth with turmoil.  As Felgenhauer notes in his article:

Putin and his close cohorts have reason to be
worried. The ruling elite is split today, and not in Putin’s favor.
Over the last year, discontent has spread rapidly, engulfing previously
loyal parts of the bureaucracy. It’s not well known to the general
public, but no secret to insiders: The middle ranks of the military,
security services and law enforcement are today disgusted with Kremlin
policies and no longer support Putin’s regime.

It’s amazing how quickly a revolution can come, and they regularly take not only observers, but the politicians who are overthrown by surprise.

But, equally, there are strong reasons why this potential union may never take place.  From Putin’s perspective, the whole deal smacks of desperation and a lack of subtlety. People may just turn around and laugh at him.  Lukashenko, meanwhile, will be carefully considering just how he can
persuade Putin that a man with a very small power base can remain
important enough to not be simply discarded when no longer needed.  Will Lukashenko be better off playing the role of "bullfrog of Belarus pond" for the role of "little fish swimming next to the great white shark of the post-Soviet sea"?

Union? is a post from: Siberian Light