| Daily News Brief May 21, 2014 |
Top of the Agenda
Russia, China Sign Natural Gas Deal
Russia and China agreed to a thirty-year natural gas deal on Wednesday
as Russian president Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Xi
Jinping, met in Shanghai. The meeting signaled closer diplomatic and
economic ties between the two countries as Moscow seeks to cut its
dependence on the West. Under the deal, Russia's state-owned Gazprom
will export thirty-eight billion cubic meters of gas a year, but the
price, long a sticking point of the decade-long negotiation process, was kept secret (FT). The European Union, meanwhile, urged Russia on Wednesday not to disrupt gas flows to Ukraine over a pricing dispute (WSJ), while the United States added twelve Russians to sanctions rolls for human rights violations related to the Magnitsky Act (RFE/RL). In eastern Ukraine, conflict fatigue appeared to set in ahead of Sunday's presidential election (NYT).
Analysis
"Both
countries have moved closer together in recent years, but Moscow and
Beijing have also traditionally hedged their relations with each other.
China, of course, does not want to damage its much more lucrative ties
with the West by joining Russia on a bold anti-Western crusade, while
Russia is fearful of being drawn into the Chinese orbit and eventually
reduced to the position of Beijing's junior partner. Has the Ukraine
crisis, however, changed the dynamic of the Sino-Russian relationship?" asks Nikolas K. Gvosdev in the National Interest.
"Russian
domestic politics is surely influencing Moscow's behavior—how could it
not?—but if I had to pick a single class of events to which this episode
belongs, I would put it in the bin with the many, many other instances
of aggressive self-help in response to the insecurity endemic to an
anarchic international system. Observers of world politics have noted
this pattern for literally thousands of years. Meanwhile, the nationalist turn we're seeing in Russian domestic politics could be as much consequence as cause
of these international tensions, and the idea of Russia as
pathologically expansionist is hard to square with the limited scope of
Russian irridentism we've actually seen over the past 20 years," writes
Jay Ufelder.
"The
atmosphere, especially in eastern and southern Ukraine, is likely to be
highly charged over the coming week as the election approaches. Unlike
past Ukrainian elections, however, tensions are less likely to emerge
due to illicit activities designed to secure victory for one of the
candidates. Rather, the process will be under intense scrutiny because some actors are seeking evidence of a failed election
while others are hoping for a credible process under extraordinarily
challenging circumstances. The quality of Ukraine's election will
ultimately be determined on the ground by the efforts of hundreds of
thousands of election workers and security personnel, as well as the
millions of Ukrainian citizens who come to the polls," writes Erik
Herron for the Monkey Cage.
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