Russia is preparing to cut off natural gas supplies to neighbouring Belarus and Georgia unless the two former Soviet republics agree by the year-end to pay much higher prices in 2007.Coming a year after Gazprom, the Russian gas giant, briefly cut gas to Ukraine in a similar pricing dispute, such a move could provoke further international criticism that Moscow is using energy as a political tool. It might also intensify pressure on Russia to ratify the European Energy Charter treaty, which would require such disagreements to be resolved through arbitration.
Action against Belarus could affect supplies to Poland and Germany since a transit pipeline runs across the republic, though it carries only a third of the volumes running through a bigger export pipeline across Ukraine. Last January, pressure in the trans-Ukrainian pipeline to western Europe dropped as a result of what Gazprom said was Ukraine “stealing” gas for its own use.