RUSSIA: Russia is imposing a quadruple hike in gas prices to neighbour Belarus, triggering fears of a crisis similar to the stand-off earlier this year with Ukraine.
State-owned gas giant Gazprom has told Belarus that it must pay world prices for its gas from December if it wants to continue getting supplies.
Ukraine's failure to pay a similar gas price hike on January 1st saw Russia turn off the taps, triggering a crisis that spread across much of Europe.
Critics say the demand, on one of Europe's poorest countries, is being used as leverage for Gazprom to get control of Belarus's state-owned gas pipelines.
The move is likely to sharpen anxieties in EU countries already concerned that the Kremlin may be using gas supply as an economic weapon.
The price increase for Belarus is unusual because, unlike Ukraine, its president Alexander Lukashenko is a staunch ally of Russia.
Mr Lukashenko won re-election last month in a vote condemned as fraudulent by the EU and the US, but welcomed as fair by Moscow.
Gazprom insists the demand is based on commercial reality: Belarus pays $47 for a cubic metre of gas now, compared to the European price of $230, under a subsidy contract that runs to the end of the year.
The company says that, as with Ukraine, it wants to end the practice of offering subsidies to former Soviet states to bring it into line with modern market practices.
Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov said the demand was being made now to give Belarus time to adjust. "So that that issue of gas prices for Belarus should not become the topic of New Year's Eve television programmes, we want to agree in advance how to work next year," he told Russian television.
Belarus has made no official comment on the demand, with Mr Lukashenko a virtual recluse since his March 19th election victory. Diplomats in Moscow say that if the Belarus leader sells his distribution network to Gazprom, he is likely to be offered a fresh subsidy agreement, in part because his impoverished country cannot pay the increase.
The price hike demand comes with Gazprom, Europe's largest gas company, at the centre of several controversies.
Yesterday, former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder insisted he knew nothing of a €1 billion loan guarantee made to Gazprom by his government weeks before he left office in November to work for the company.
Meanwhile, Georgia continues to blame Moscow for mystery blasts that severed pipelines carrying gas from Russia last January.
Brussels is also having an economic tussle with the company over what officials see as a one-way deal on energy security.
The Kremlin wants Gazprom to buy up European energy supply companies, to ensure that Europe buys Russian gas long into the future.
But EU calls for Russia to liberalise its energy sector, by breaking up and privatising the Gazprom energy monopoly, have been refused by Moscow, which has spent recent years increasing the state's holding of energy companies.