EUROPEAN SLOW LEARNERS

Russia cuts off the EU's energy supply a couple of times and straight away Europeans are screaming "unreliable":

Russia and Belarus' handling of an oil dispute has damaged their credibility as EU energy suppliers the International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned, after Russia's Transneft admitted on Monday (8 January) afternoon that it cut off supplies to Belarus in a transit tariff row.

The statement by Transneft deputy chief Sergiej Grigoriev to newswire Reuters came after the IEA and the European Commission spent a whole day scrambling around for information on why the 1.8 million barrel a day Druzhba pipeline connecting Russia to Poland, Germany and Slovakia stopped Sunday night.

"If an energy supplier is going to cut off the power to your house, it's the least you could expect for him to warn you that this is happening and to say the problem will be solved in a couple of days," IEA executive director Claude Mandil told EUobserver. "This lack of information is much worse than the actual disruption in supply."

"I can't believe that nobody in Belarus or Russia stepped forward with an official statement. It's incredible. It makes them look unreliable," he added. "Russia's reliability was already a little shaken when it stopped the flow of gas to Ukraine [in January] last year. Now the same kind of thing is happening again."

Europeans have made a big mistake in making themselves reliant on Russian energy: since the EU is Russian energy dependent, Europeans can rely on the Russians to screw them over every chance they get.