If Russia wasn't a nuclear power with wide geographic reach to critical regions based on their vast territory, this would just be kind of amusing (tip to Instapundit):
The Russian energy firm Gazprom is increasingly off its stride in Europe, its largest export market. Bulgaria has managed to negotiate a 20 percent price cut in its new ten-year contract with the gas giant, an unprecedented reversal of fortune from only a short time ago. Gazprom had cut off gas to the Ukraine in 2006 and 2009 during contract negotiations, which left Bulgaria freezing for several days as they were on the same pipeline. ...
The cause of the turnaround, the Wall Street Journal reports, should come as no surprise: the shale gas boom in the United States. The US has begun exporting gas to Europe, and has also ramped up coal exports by more than 250 percent since 2005. The net result has been to knock Gazprom back on its heels. The WSJ reports that the negotiations with Bulgaria were heated, with Gazprom’s negotiators shouting in frustration on several occasions.
Russia used energy blackmail to get political concessions when they had the advantage. Now that the Russians are losing that leverage, their customers are striking back with memories of high-handed Russian actions still fresh in their memories.
But Russia won't learn from this. Or rather, since it is American energy exports that has undermined Moscow's former leverage, I'm sure the Russians will learn that American really is out to undermine Russia rather than learning that Russian bad behavior has consequences once their former victims have options.
You just can't reset relations when the operating system defaults to paranoid conspiracies against the motherland every single time.
