Russian Energy Policy Research Papers (original) (raw)

Our scientific research includes three side, a threefold relationship of Russia and the Balkans, the one established in the geopolitical thought of important writers, one historical, factual, and modern one, more economic "only" relationship. Although Russia was addressed to the Balkans, according to the creators of the its foreign policy with more or less intensity, and opposite pressure to resolve the issue of leaving the warm sea and control of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, which Russia has initiated to almost all gatherings of the great powers, the biggest part of the work will be devoted to the period after the Second World War up to Putin's rule.
Balkans as a haven for Russian presence, is especially challenging for research, both because of its geographical position and historical fraught of relationships of nearly all Balkan countries and Russia, with the aim of laying the foundations for the creation of the modern geopolitical mosaic of Russia and its presence in the Balkans, in the light of current developments in international relations.
The essence is to break the myth of the Balkans as a traditional Russian stronghold, to observe it as a field of collision of East and West, where both sides have conflicting interests and conflicting goals. In the second half of the twentieth century, the Balkans was the line of the meeting of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, through the special status of the non-aligned Yugoslavia, developments after the Cold War, to the various roles in the time of Yugoslavia's dissolution and the wars in this area. For understanding Russian presence in the Balkans today, it is especially important to emphasize the period of Vladimir Putin's rule, his personality that never ceases to intrigue, and who wants to maintain Russia's importance on the scene where pressing issues in the world are being solved and to regain its status of "great power“, in accordance to his clear realistic views on international relations.
Key words: geopolitics, geopolitics of gas, foreign policy, Russia, the Balkans, energy projects, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, Putin.