Free Preview of Members-Only Content
To view the requested intelligence, you must be a Stratfor.com member.
The strategic significance of Ukraine for Russia cannot be over estimated, and yet the country will almost certainly be slipping through Moscow's fingers on Dec. 26, when Ukrainians will likely elect opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko to be their next president. Russia's siloviki, the leaders of the country's security and military apparatus, who share power with the more reform-minded St. Petersburg clan led by President Vladimir Putin, can only be incensed by the outcome. Their push to purge Russia of Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the other oligarchs, however, soon will lead them to the comeback trail. This effort often has appeared disorganized and lacking direction, but important economic changes afoot in Russia already seem to be giving the siloviki an organizing principle that they have been lacking.
With the loss of Ukraine, Russia has reached an historical geopolitical low from which it will be difficult to recover. Domestically, however, the siloviki can take note of some significant successes with respect to the destruction of Yukos, and with a string of acquisitions by natural gas giant Gazprom that they have pushed for that are beginning to snowball. With the world's largest reserves of natural gas, significant oil reserves and a massive power sector under its control, Gazprom is set to become one of the largest companies of any kind in the world -- thanks to the silovikis' desire to reassert state control over strategic resources. With Gazprom now Kremlin-owned, future acquisitions likely will see the oil pipelines of state-owned Transneft, a billion-dollar state pipeline enterprise, merged with Gazprom. This will give the company control of Russia's oil exports, the second-largest in the world after Saudi Arabia. Along the way, Gazprom will also likely swallow up more of Russia's private oil firms, adding to the reserves of Rosneft and Yuganskneftegaz.
It is entirely possible that all of this will be completed in a matter of months, and with the state firmly in control of Russia's oil and gas revenues and the billions in hard currency that they bring in, the siloviki will quickly realize that the gargantuan company that Russia has built would be the perfect vehicle for projecting Russian influence abroad, and they will push Putin to use it. Gazprom will come to represent economically something that Russia now lacks militarily -- the capacity to project influence beyond Russian borders.
Normally, the more reform-minded St. Petersburg clan led by Putin, with which the siloviki coexist in the Kremlin -- or better put, against which they compete -- would seek to block some of these more aggressive maneuvers, particularly those that threaten the country's economic growth. Many St. Petersburgers in the government, in fact, have been complaining about some of the recent moves, especially those that are turning Gazprom into what Economy Minister German Gref recently called a "hypermonopoly."
| Stratfor Members, please log in at the top left hand corner |
