Since Russian Federation’s declaration of multipolar world approach in the Munich Summit in 2007 we encounter huge power forms of classical traditional imperial approaches, in the international context. In this context, Euroasia region said to be dragged into a chaotic structrue, especaily Russia’s operations to Gerogia after this decleration and Russia-Ukraine crisis in the folloeing. There is no doubt that geography has a significant importance in this process. From the words of Yves Lacoste (2000) it is understood that, geography bring the need to have an equal reading of power and war:
“…geography, above everything, is useful for waging war. For every science, for every knowledge, the question of epistemological premises must be asked. Scientific duration is bound to a history and must be considered on the one hand in its relations with ideologies, and on the other hand as practice or as power (pp.50)”
In this context, by move from the geopolitical introduction we will focus on energy as an important instrument of influence in Russian foreign policy in the context of Europe. The advantages and disadvantages of geography and the creation of an energy gulf, and its ability to throw many actors into turmoil, can be explained by many historical examples.
As a matter of fact, the last example is undoubtedly seen in the context of the Russia-Ukraine war that started in February 2022 and the subsequent energy war imposed on Russia on the axis of Western sanctions. In the context of this study, the EU’s energy relations will be analyzed based upon a special focus on Russia and the West.
Energy security is a multi-dimentional pheonmena. During World War I, England President Churchill’s decisiton to use oil instead of coal had become an important turning point and following this period international importance of the energy security has gradually increased. Although the main reason for Churchill’s decision was to gain superiority over the German navies (Yergin, 2011, pp.204), as a result, Churchill initiated a new debate in the field of International Relations with this decision and created an important threshold in the field of Energy. The reflections of this situation in the following period manifested itself especially in the Middle East. The influence of great powers and multinationals in oil crises has a cyclical effect on the balance of power and struggles, as seen in the nationalization crisis in Iran in 1950. During the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, when the United States provided Israel with substantial economic aid, members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries raised oil prices and turned oil into a foreign policy weapon. Thus, this oil crisis in 1973 revealed the critical importance of oil, and more broadly energy security, on the global stage: Energy Votexs. In fact, conceptualizing this phenomena based on the Middle East region historically provides a clear framework. Although some crisis occur due to the energy becoming an area of gravity that all actors seek to become a part of, lots of international actors remain in the region. Thus, based on Middle East, conceptualization of the energy vortex offers a smiliar characteristics between Europe and Russia relations: i) having important underground resources, ii) being the center of attraction, iii) being indispensable deaspite dangerous/ unstable situations, iv) open to conjonctural changes and v) creating a situation of no alternatives (Özel Özcan & Öten, 2022).
Graph: Development of Russia’s GDP from 2018 to 2023
The equation of geography with war presents us with the tension of an energy war, if not a direct confrontation between the West and Russia. From February 2022, after the Russia-Ukraine War, or “special military operation” as Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin called it (Ria Novosti, 2022), the West quickly imposed sanctions against Russia. As of February 2022, after the Russia-Ukraine War, or “special military operation” as President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation calls it (Ria Novosti, 2022), the West is rapidly imposing sanctions against Russia. The the most attracted measures were fiscal. Thus, the process which is seen as the most comprehensive sanctions has started. Some of these are: i) The European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada have frozen the Russian central bank’s assets in their countries, i) major Russian banks have been excluded from Swift, iii) Russian companies have been banned from loan (BBC, 2023), iv) there has been a decision to impose floor prices in the energy sector and, most significantly, the North Stream 2 project has completely collapsed.
Of course, the impact of the sanctions on the Russian economy are notewothy. Based on the forecasts of the OECD, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, Russian GDP is expected to fall by 2.5% according to the OECD and 0.2% according to the World Bank in 2023 (see Chart I). The instability in the energy markets should not be forgotten here. Likewise, while in the first half of 2022 Russia was not affected by rising fossil fuel prices in global markets, in December 2022, oil import sanctions limited Russian revenues and, according to the International Energy Agency, Russia’s oil revenues fell by more than a quarter in January 2023 (compared to January 2022) (The European Council, 2023).
Russia’s Energy Diplomacy
Russia’s approach, as a country that used energy as an instrument of foreign policy on the face of those sanctions, and the situation it is facing should be examined. First and foremost, an important issue to consider is Russian vision of shaping the system by using the card of energy. In 2020, energy market had affected due to global decrease in the consumption of oil. In this period, eventhough Russia and Saudi Arabia had a short conflict on the production levels despite the consensus of the countries in OPEC and OPEC + on decreasing oil production, this issue had been solved. Energy has a vital importance for Russia and the example shows that it is on the side of winners no matter what. A second point is Russia’s pace on creating alternatives in the context of energy transportation routes. The most important example for this would be Turkish Stream Project. The Project has been initiated in order to create an alternative energy corridor which bypasses Ukraine (Özel, 2015). Initially, it was the South Stream Project, which was to pass through Bulgaria without involving Turkey, and more recently the Turkish Stream Project to transport Russian natural gas to Europe has played a key role in the region. The third point is that the EU’s dependence on Russian energy is well known to Russia. We say this because the EU realizes that without Russian energy the EU has a limited alternative. Chart Il, which shows the situation before the sanctions, illustrates this dependence. Likewise, on June 3, 2022, the EU revised its sanctions package, including a partial embargo on Russian oil, and decided to ban the import of Russian crude oil by sea from December 5, 2022 and oil product imports from February 5, 2023. However, an exception has been made. In a compromise with EU member states such as Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, which depend on imports through the Druzhba pipeline, crude oil and oil products were exempted from pipeline imports (Chaill, 2022). Of course, Russia’s LNG imports to the EU have also reached their highest level in years. In January 2023 alone, the EU imported 15, billion cubic meters of LNG from Russia (AA; 2023). In this energy maelstrom between Russia and the EU, it can be said that the parties are in between neither sinking to the bottom nor floating to the surface with good relations as before.
Graph 2: EU Members’ Dependency Ratios on Russian Oil for 2021
Another situation is the steps taken by Russia to avoid being dragged down in this energy vortex with new buyers and new commercial relations in the context of alternative creation. India, like China, is emerging as an actor with which Russia has growing ties. India’s imports of Russian oil creating a new alternative space by making a tenfold increase compared to last year, for Asia’s third largest economy to increase its crude oil purchases from Moscow. Thus, it is important that Russia sells energy to China and India, the world’s third largest oil importers, and does so at a discount. Thus, in 2021, Russian oil accounted for only 2% of India’s annual crude oil imports, however it is now around 20% according to the latest data (BBC, 2023b).
At the last point, it is questionable how both Russia and the European Union will get out of this energy vortex. The difference in the orientations of each country and their attitudes in the axis of the current conjunctural developments question the process on the axis of interdependence. Here, especially considering the war focus of the process, it will be important to take immediate decisions in the name of regional and global stability and to provide peace as soon as possible. Otherwise, as I mentioned in Yves’ article, geographical realities will be a reflection of fights over war and renew themselves with the actorly approaches of politics. In this context, energy is the most visible and fastest-acting concrete link in the process.
