In the first of his monthly despatches on Russian-Balkan relations, Maksim Samorukov assesses the impact of the sell-off of Gazprom and Lukoil’s businesses on Moscow’s interests and influence in the region.
Maksim Samorukov
As Russia approaches the fourth anniversary of its ill-fated full-scale invasion of Ukraine, all eyes in Moscow are on its trilateral talks with Kyiv and Washington. Some hope for a breakthrough that would at least bring a pause in the brutal war, others fear that Russia may concede too much in exchange for hollow US promises. But all seem to be thrilled by the prospect of a new world order in which great powers carve out their spheres of influence by force and transactional deals.
Russia views Europe, with its insistence on rules and values, as doomed to irrelevance in the emerging international arrangements, so little attention is paid to the ongoing dismantling of the last vestiges of Russia’s presence in the European energy market. For decades, Moscow’s pre-eminence in the energy sector has been more entrenched in the Balkans than in any other part of Europe. But now, multi-billion investments are slipping away from Russia without making so much as a ripple in public discussions.
Over the past few weeks, two Russian energy giants – Gazprom and Lukoil -announced the sale of their Balkan assets as routinely as if it were a minor trifle. Having seen the war-inflicted collapse of their far larger businesses in wider Europe, it’s understandable that the losses in the Balkans seem to them no more than aftershocks in comparison to the earthquake of 2022. Still, for the Balkan states on the receiving end of the deals, the exit of the Russians amounts to a tectonic shift in their geoeconomic position.
