Valdai Club

By rapidly conquering strategic places along the Dnieper River, including Kiev, the Russian army would actually form a new Ukrainian state that would be pro-Russian. That scenario was announced by Ivan Timofeev, the head of the "Valdai Club", but he emphasized that the chances for this war are very small.

BELGRADE - Russia is not considering recognizing Kosovo any time soon and does not use its relations with other countries as a bargaining chip in its fence-mending talks with the US, the Valdai Club's program director and a managing partner with the consulting agency Foreign Policy Advisory Group Andrei Sushentsov said in an interview with Sputnik Serbia.

Andrey Sushentsov, a programme director at the Valdai Club - whose members meet Russian officials each autumn - told Sputnik news agency that Russia should not be expected to endanger relations with old allies like Serbia in order to improve its relationship with the US.

It is very likely for Russia to renounce transportation of gas through the network of Ukraine, Russian Economy Minister Alexander Novak has said.

On Sunday Novak was quoted by news agency RIA as saying that Moscow would put all its effort in building the infrastructure of the so-called "Turkish Stream" gas project that is to pump gas to Turkey.

The cost of the future Turkish Stream gas pipeline project is comparable to the cost of the abandoned South Stream project, according to Gurkan Kumbaroglu, President-Elect of the International Association for Energy Economics (IAEE).