Russia’s Foreign Energy Policy: Resources, Actors, Conflicts

This book examines Russia’s multidimensional foreign energy policy and the emerging and ongoing conflicts with energy-consuming and transit countries.

Russia’s Foreign Energy Policy examines whether the interdependence patterns shaped through various channels (such as foreign trade, investment, finance, technology, and social interactions) between Russia and energy-importing countries could prevent energy-based conflict. Drawing on semi-structured expert interviews, Kenan Aslanli challenges the one-sided conventional wisdom that focusses on foreign policy ambitions and overlooks the peculiarities of the energy dimension. Instead, Aslanli highlights the complexity of contemporary energy affairs using a holistic approach that goes beyond geopolitics. He examines various energy types such as crude oil, natural gas, and nuclear and considers a diverse range of actors which include energy companies and international organizations. Using examples from Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, Aslanli demonstrates how the Russian strategy of using energy resources as a tool or energy weapon for foreign policy goals has a diminishing return in the long run.

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of energy policy, foreign policy, and Russian studies more broadly.

Kenan Aslanli is a faculty member at Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University (AYBU), Department of International Relations. He works as an expert on the energy and political economy of the wider Eurasian powers at the Center for Iranian Studies (IRAM) in Turkey. He graduated from the doctorate program at Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University, Department of International Relations (English) in 2022. He was a project partner and researcher at the Center for Eastern European Studies at the University of Bremen (Forschungsstelle Osteuropa) and a visiting lecturer at the Vienna BFI University of Applied Sciences (Austria).