Belarus Fights Russian Energy Price Hike

MOSCOW -- Russia seems willing to throw its energy weight around, risking cutting off supplies of its oil and gas to Europe as it seeks market prices from neighboring countries that had long depended on cheap energy.

To the surprise of many, however, more resistance has come from small Belarus than from the mightier Western countries rattled by their dependence on Russian energy.

A feud with Belarus over new oil tariffs brought a halt this week to shipments through the main Russian oil pipeline to Western Europe _ a major embarrassment for the Kremlin as it seeks to reassure the West of its reliability after a natural gas price fight with Ukraine last year saw brief interruptions.

"Russia has found itself in a very complicated political situation. Of course, it can turn off the (pipeline) as it did with Ukraine, but annual shutdowns will take their toll on Russia's reputation," Alexey Makarkin, an analyst with the Center for Political Technologies, told The Associated Press.

And Belarus is not the only former Soviet republic taking a stand: Azerbaijan has stopped shipping oil westward via a Russian pipeline, underlining the fact that it now has alternative ways of getting the commodity to market. The move came after Russia angered Azerbaijan by demanding a more-than-twofold price increase for Russian gas.

"They're obviously making a small point in the way that they've done it," said Chris Weafer, chief strategist with Alfa Bank.

Last year's dispute with Ukraine ended in a matter of days with a murky deal under which Ukraine agreed to higher gas prices. But the dispute with Belarus shows signs of lasting much longer.

In Ukraine, President Viktor Yushchenko in late 2005 was facing parliamentary elections a couple months down the road and didn't want his government to be remembered as one that had let its citizens go without heating and cooking gas.

In contrast, Belarus' authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko, has quashed his country's opposition parties and is playing the dispute with Russia as one of a small proud nation standing firm in the face of bullying by a huge, energy-rich neighbor.

Russia angered Belarus both by demanding it pay double for Russian gas this year and by imposing a fat export duty on oil to Belarusian customers. Belarus retaliated by declaring a duty on Russian oil that goes to Western Europe via pipelines that cross Belarus.

Russia's state pipeline operator OAO Transneft confirmed Monday that it had stopped oil running through the Druzhba pipeline, but put the blame on Belarus, saying the shutoff was forced by Belarus siphoning off oil to compensate for the Russian duty.

Russia may have hoped that Western European countries _ which regard Belarus as a pariah state _ would unleash a barrage of criticism against Minsk for the alleged skimming. But pointed criticism of Belarus was notably absent.