This timely book analyses the status of hydrocarbon energy in Russia as both a saleable commodity and as a source of societal and political power. Through empirical studies in domestic and foreign policy contexts, Veli-Pekka Tykkynen explores the development of a hydrocarbon culture in Russia and the impact this has on its politics, identity and approach to climate change and renewable energy.

Russia launched a massive attack on Ukraine on February 24, 2022. President Vladimir Putin and perhaps only four people in the Russian power elite were behind this decision. Putin's goal is to expand Russia's power so that a state he considers an empire, such as Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union, can subjugate countries such as Ukraine, which seeks full self-determination. Along with geopolitical megalomania, the motivation for using increased violence both against the country's own citizens and to attack Ukraine was to maintain power as well as to protect Putin himself. Why can only a handful of people wield so much power to determine Russia's direction, and why was the West so powerless to respond to this challenge until February 2022? One of the key explanatory factors is oil and gas, which play a central role in the Russian economy. These raw materials have centralized political power in Russia and weakened Europe's foreign policy unity.

In this book, I analyze the relationship between the Russian fuel and energy complex and political power in the context of Russian domestic and foreign policy. Russia's energy resources, and the real power and violence mediated and programmed by their presence, are examined in light of the global imperative for any society to shift from fossil fuels to low-carbon fuels.