BRUSSELS — Friend or foe, or something uneasily in between? That's the question Europe is asking about Russia, and Russia about a newly aggressive Europe. President Vladimir Putin's choice of Dmitri Medvedev, Chairman of Gazprom, the gas company with an emerging stranglehold on European energy supplies, only throws this question into an even starker light.
Relations between Europe and Russia have been deteriorating for several years, but once manageable economic issues, including energy, are now being aggravated by much more volatile political differences.
The risk is a climate of undisguised hostility, with potentially greater costs than during the nadir of the Cold War.