ABSTRACT
Churchill spoke to a beleaguered Britain at the dawn of the Second World War, ‘I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest’ (Churchill 1939). Decades later, and despite the end of the Soviet Union, Russia’s fluctuating stance on climate cooperation under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 2 seems wrapped in unpredictability. Russia initially opposed quantitative restrictions of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under the Climate Change Convention. The Kyoto Protocol, adopted in 1997, gave the country a significant economic stake in joining the climate regime by allowing it to increase its GHG emissions to the 1990 level or sell any unused amounts. Despite these favourable conditions, former President Vladimir Putin wavered for years before endorsing ratification of the Kyoto Protocol in 2004.
