CIUS Seminar Series
Margarita M. Balmaceda
The Politics of Energy Dependency:
Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania Between Domestic Oligarchs and Russian
Pressure: A Book Launch and Discussion of Current Energy Politics
Recent events in Ukraine again raise the question of Ukraine’s energy policy choices and
the role of powerful domestic groups in relations with Russia and the EU.
The Politics of Energy Dependency considers these issues from the perspective of post-independence energy policies in three states: Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania. Dr. Balmaceda’s project analyzes the effect of these countries’ geographic location on Russia’s ability to use energy as a foreign-policy tool in the region and on their own political development.
Margarita M. Balmaceda is Professor of Diplomacy and International Relations at
Seton Hall University and Research Associate at the Harvard Ukrainian Research
Institute. Her publications include Energy Dependency, Politics and Corruption in the
Former Soviet Union (Routledge, 2008),The Politics of Energy Dependency: Ukraine,
Belarus and Lithuania Between Domestic Oligarchs and Russian Pressure
(Toronto:University of Toronto Press, 2013), and Living the High Life in Minsk: Russian Energy
Rents, Domestic Populism and Belarus’ Impending Crisis (Budapest: Central
European University Press, 2014).
Discussant: Dr. Robert W. Murray, Vice-President, Research at the Frontier Centre for
Public Policy, Adjunct Professor of Political Science at U of A, Senior Fellow of Security
and Defence Policy at the Atlantic Institute of Market Studies and Research Fellow at
the University of Alberta’s European Union Centre of Excellence.
Edmonton
March 12