Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius assured that Lithuania is prepared to appeal to the EU institutions with a proposal of imposing restrictions and certain rules on trading electricity from the third parties, which are planning to generate electric power under conditions that do not comply with the requirements of nuclear safety.

• March 22, 2011

Prime Minister Mykola Azarov has said that Ukraine will revise its energy strategy for the long- term prospects, local media reported

• March 22, 2011

Setting aside decades of acrimony over President Ronald Reagan's vision of a "Star Wars" missile shield, the United States and Russia have been holding exploratory but serious talks about potential ways to cooperate on missile defense in Europe.

• March 22, 2011

Ukraine's joining a free trade area with the European Union will depend on greater flexibility and a readiness for a compromise with EU member states, Prime Minister Mykola Azarov has said.

• March 22, 2011

Japanese workers pushed ahead with efforts Monday to connect electrical power to the remaining disabled reactors at the heavily damaged Fukushima Daiichi power plant, as the World Bank offered an upbeat assessment on the impact of the nuclear crisis, saying the effects will be “short-lived.”

• March 21, 2011

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says that Japanese companies can participate in production of natural gas in eastern Russia.

• March 21, 2011

Bulgaria has confirmed its interest in buying natural gas from Turkmenistan, as well as its commitment to facilitate gas exports, the Economy Ministry said in a statement

• March 21, 2011

(New York: Free Press, 2011) 523 pp.

A Book Review by Andrej Kreutz, Ph.D.

Treisman’s book is a lengthy and relatively well-researched description and analysis of the last 25 years of Russia’s history and its relations with the West. The work is not chronological, but presents discussions of a number of topics chosen by the author, such as: the role of Mikhail Gorbachev (the Captain) in Russian history, the collapse of the USSR, the social and economic transformations, the Mountains (the Caucasus’ problems), falling apart of Russian-American relations, and “the Russia that has returned”. In the special and rather short chapter which is placed in the middle of the book, “The Logic of Politics”, Treisman presents his theory about the mechanisms of changes of Russian politics, which he, perhaps one-sidedly, explains mainly by the variations of the natural gas and oil prices.

• March 20, 2011