Ukraine's Energy Challenge
OP-ED
Maria Snegovaya: Think of Russia as an ordinary petrostate, not an extraordinary superpower
Picture taken on Feb. 20, 2015 shows facilities of Novoportovskoye oil and gas condensates oilfield of Russian gas and oil giant Gazprom at Cape Kamenny in the Gulf of Ob shore line in the south-east of a peninsular in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District, 250 km north of the town of Nadym, northern Russia.
The Kremlin’s motivation in the Ukrainian conflict has split scholars. Is Russia a greedy state ideologically driven to expand or a declining insecure superpower defending itself against NATO? Realist scholars (for example, see these recent pieces by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt) argue that the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict was provoked by NATO expansion into Georgia and Ukraine, which were a part of Russia’s strategic zones of influence. The opponents tend to blame Russia for the conflict.
