MOSCOW: This is supposed to be a banner year for Russian diplomacy. On Jan. 1, Russia assumed the year-long chairmanship of the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations with a plan to stress “energy security”. The year’s highlight is to be a July summit in the white nights of St. Petersburg, Vladimir Putin’s home town, at which the Russian president will sit at the head of one of the world’s most exclusive tables. As well as Putin, the group includes the leaders of the United States, Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Japan.

But Putin’s year in charge and his stated agenda got off to a rocky start when Russia’s state-controlled energy company, Gazprom, cut off natural gas supplies to Ukraine on Jan. 1 in a fight over pricing. Reductions in gas entering a pipeline network that extends from Russia to France were felt across Europe, with delivery shortfalls in many countries. The dispute was settled on Wednesday, after most supplies had been resumed.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday criticized the cutoff as “obviously political” and said it raised serious questions about Russia’s presidency of the G8 and its role in the global economy. She called it “ironic and not good” that Russia pressured Ukraine on the day it assumed the G8 presidency.

European Union governments had similar responses. “In many capitals, officials were quite surprised, to put it mildly,” said an EU diplomat who was not authorized to speak on the record. “People were expecting, on the first day of its chairmanship, another attitude regarding relations with its neighbours and the West, particularly with regards to this commodity, energy, that’s making Russia a world power.”

To many people in Western Europe, the business rationale Gazprom cited for its decision was a thin disguise for political action, punishing a new Ukrainian government for its policy of pursuing membership in the EU and Nato.

Russia’s membership in the G8 has been controversial since its entry in the late 1990s. Recently, the issue has come back to the fore with the government’s legal assault on the oil giant Yukos and a new measure that would bring grass-roots activism under greater government control.

“Putin has shot himself in the foot,” said Margot Light, a Russia specialist and professor emeritus of international relations at the London School of Economics, after the gas skirmish. “It has tarnished Russia’s reputation both as chair of the G8 and as a reliable energy supplier.”—Dawn/The Washington Post News Service