Wealthy and powerful who wanted us to replace Yanukovich in Ukraine are learning they were wrong.

[Strelnikov_]

32. Yep. The statement "wonderful trade and economic relations with our partners in the East and South"

translates to "we'll sell our fossil fuel to the Chinese and Koreans, and take payment in Roubles".

Putin has long been nursing ambitions of using Russia's vast oil and gas supplies as an instrument of power. In the mid '90s, after 15 years in the KGB, Putin went back to school, attending the St. Petersburg Mining Institute. He wrote a dissertation titled "Toward a Russian Transnational Energy Company." The topic: how to use energy resources for grand strategic planning.

“In the early stages of pro-market reforms in Russia the state temporarily lost strategic control over the mineral resources industry. This led to the stagnation and disintegration of the geological sector built over many decades…. However, today the market euphoria of the early years of economic reform is gradually giving room to a more balanced approach that... recognises the need for a regulatory role of the state.”

- Vladimir Putin, “Toward a Russian Transnational Energy Company.”, PhD dissertation, St. Petersburg Mining Institute


”The Rouble must become a more widespread means of international transactions. To this end, we need to open a stock exchange in Russia to trade in oil, gas, and other goods to be paid for in Roubles. Our goods are traded on global markets. Why are not they traded in Russia?”

— President Vladimir Putin, Speaking before the full Russian parliament, Cabinet and international reporters, May 2006


”Russia has found the Achilles’ heel of the US colossus. In concert with its oil-producing partners and the rising powerhouse economies of the East, Russia is altering the foundations of the current US-led liberal global oil-market order, insidiously working to undermine its US-centric nature and slanting it toward serving first and foremost the energy-security needs and the geopolitical aspirations of the rising East”

- W. Joseph Stroupe, author, Russian Rubicon: Impending Checkmate of the West, as quoted in the Asia Times, November 22, 2006