Recent weeks have seen the welcome return to the active blogosphere of three previously moribund Russia blogs: Andy Young's Siberian Light, Lyndon's Scraps of Moscow and most recently Vilhelm Konnander's Weblog: Politics and Security in Russia, Central & Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

La Russophobe comments repeatedly on Andy's blog, recently quoted Lyndon in her latest Publius Pundit installment, and is now pleased to tout Vilhelm's recent analysis of the impact of global warming on Russia.

Publishing the wonderfully Photoshopped image of Vladimir "Studboy" Putin which appears above, Vilhelm first quotes Putin joking about global warming as follows: "Russia is a northern country and if temperatures get warmer by two or three degrees Celsius it's not that bad - we could spend less on warm coats and agricultural experts say that grain harvests would increase further." Vilhelm then points out what Putin failed to notice: that Gasprom's export volumes to Europe are down 16% this winter because of unusually warm average temperatures and less need for heating. As Vilhelm states: "It is quite clear that if this tendency would become permanent in years to come, it would have a grossly negative impact on international gas demand and prices." This loss in revenue would, of course, seriously undermine the Kremlin's ability to control the country and leverage influence in the West. Vilhelm asks: "So, should we expect Gazprom executives to turn into ardent environmentalists? Will Ivanov and Medvedev campaign to stop global warming for next year's presidential elections?" By doing so, the Kremlin could theoretically hope to continue a "cold Earth" that would demand hot prices for Russian energy. But Russia can't play that, because doing so would require Russia itself to adopt sweeping environmental reforms which would cost far more, in creaking backwards Russia, than it could possibly hope to earn from maintained energy sales (which are finite in any case).

So, though Vilhelm doesn't go so far as to say so, global warming may have a silver lining: It may do the neo-Soviet Union what Star Wars did to the Soviet Union and what World War I did to the Tsar.