ABSTRACT
Russia’s foreign energy policy moves can be examined in parallel to the country’s foreign policy doctrines based on grand strategy. Russia’s foreign policy is determined by the domestic political discourse and international context. Russian decision-makers developed an argument against the “energy weapon” claims that the country started to contribute to the energy security of Europe from the period of the USSR without serious energy conflicts and oil-gas supply disruptions. Russia’s central strategy in foreign energy policy is to continue its hegemony in the EU’s and post-Soviet countries’ energy markets considering market mechanisms as a “rule of the game”; and to generate “windfall profits” for sustaining economic growth and technology-based modernization in the domestic socio-economic domain. Russia’s decision to sell pipeline gas to “unfriendly countries” for rubles, allowed a flexible transaction mechanism for euro and dollar payments of the European consumers from 1 April 2022, aimed to secure gas revenues from blocking.
