(“Shell is being forced by the Russian government to hand over its controlling stake in the world’s biggest liquefied gas project,” the Guardian reports, provoking fresh fears about the Kremlin’s willingness to use the country’s growing strength in natural resources as a political weapon.” The Times has more here.) BusinessWeek has an interesting piece this week on the Russian economy and the growth of direct foreign investment in Russia since 2002. With high oil prices, the Russian economy has been humming along, but so has the Kremlin’s appetite for gobbling up private companies.
And the Kremlin hasn’t been shy about employing its property to advance political ends. Putin has used government-controlled energy companies, for example, to punish neighboring Ukraine and Georgia for not kowtowing to the Kremlin.
