Reuters: Pipeline Politics - New Gas Route Revives Russian Rivalry with West

Thwarted in one attempt to build a gas pipeline to southeast Europe, the Kremlin is working with a small circle of allies to lay the groundwork for an alternative that would help it maintain leverage in its rivalry with the West.

Russia last year aborted South Stream, a $40 billion pipeline that was to have passed under the Black Sea and via Bulgaria, in the face of objections from the European Union.

With Moscow in financial crisis, it is not clear if its latest plan - a route passing through Turkey, Greece, Macedonia and Serbia, then into Hungary and perhaps on to Austria - will ever come to fruition.

But even if it only exists on paper, it may undermine funding for rival projects and, at a time of heightened tensions over Ukraine, sow division between EU members over the extent to which the bloc should rely on Russia for energy in the future.

Read the full article HERE.