This project “follows the pipeline” -- the complex web of multi-level connections that accompany the energy relationship between Russian oil and gas producers, European consumers, and, strategically located between them, post-Soviet energy-poor transit states. Upon achieving independence in 1991, states such as Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and Moldova changed, virtually overnight, from being constituent of a single energy-rich state to being separate energy-poor entities heavily dependent on Russia. They also became, overnight, independent transit states whose own relationship with Russia could come to have a major impact on European energy consumers. Moving away from a Moscow-centered perspective, the project challenges conventional views of these states as simply passive recipients of Russian energy imperialism designs. Rather, on the basis of extended field research (in Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, Moldova and Russia) and using unique local materials, it analyzes the domestic political roots of these states’ own ways of dealing with their energy dependency on Russia, and  how the “rents of energy dependency” accrued by specific actors have been accrued, distributed, and “recycled” into their political systems. Work at the Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg includes putting the finishing touches on two related books (The Politics of Energy Dependency: Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania Between Domestic Oligarchs and Russian Pressure, 1992-2010(The University of Toronto Press, forthcoming) and Turning Politics into Economics, Dependency into Power: Belarus, Russia and Energy under Lukashenko (Central European University Press, under review) and starting a new project on Arbitrage Gains, Corruption Rents and Political Transformation in the post-Soviet states
 

Balmaceda, Margarita M.: "The Politics of Energy Dependency. Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania between Domestic Oligarchs and Russian Pressure." Toronto 2013: University of Toronto Press, ISBN: 978-1-4426-4533-2

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