Lithuanian Annual Strategic Review

Over the past twenty years, the biggest challenge to the national security of the independent states from the Baltic to the Black Sea region has been in the energy sector. The problem has mostly been the failure to secure stable energy resource provisions. This is mostly due to systemic and historical as well as internal political factors. This paper examines the problems related to the energy security of the following three ex-Soviet bloc countries: Lithuanian, Belarus and Ukraine. The main energy problem areas discussed here are oil and natural gas resources. Because the three countries have pursued very different internal and foreign security policies, their energy needs are equally divergent. Therefore, the paper presents case study for each state. Each case study, firstly, identifies a number of possible threats to energy security, secondly, examines the influences that these threats may exact on national as well as foreign policies and, thirdly, discusses how different national and foreign policies influence the resolution of energy security problems.