The December 1991 collapse of the USSR was an unmitigated disaster for all 15 nations emerging from the desiccated carapace of the Soviet Union.

Now, like a plate of mercury smashed with a hammer, rivulets of the former USSR member state’s energy assets two decades later are trickling back under the control and influence of Eurasia largest energy concern, Gazprom.

All the new post-Soviet states faced the triple problems of raging hyperinflation, evolving ad hoc nationalistic policies and, perhaps most importantly, coping with the detritus of Union-wide systems that suddenly deposited fragments of their former selves on the territories of the new nations.

Of these debris fields, the three most important were the former USSR’s communications, transport and energy grids. Working out new relationships between the nations emerging from the USSR’s demise was a long, convoluted process, given that all three systems as a whole had been designed to serve the Soviet Union as a whole, rather than its constituent republics.
Full article at: The Return of Gazprom