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Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister Halaf Halafov announced on Wednesday that Azerbaijani and Turkmen government representatives would soon hold talks about the legal status of the two countries’ maritime border in the Caspian Sea.
Maritime border discussions rarely rise to more than the level of tedium, particularly in the case of the Caspian Sea states, which have changed positions barely at all since the breakup of the Soviet Union increased the number of Caspian Sea states from two to five. But this next round of talks could herald something very different from the static boredom of the past. This meeting could well change the balance of power in Eurasia.
Russia has a number of tools at its disposal for affecting countries near it, but lately one has proven more useful than most: control of natural gas. Russia is heir to the Soviet natural gas transport network, which spanned the entire Soviet empire, including the former Warsaw Pact states that now make up Europe’s eastern fringe. Russia now supplies the European Union with roughly a quarter of its natural gas.
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