Last week's row with Belarus need not signal a new threat, writes Conor Sweeney,in Moscow

With the twist of a valve, Belarus proved last week it had the power to shut down the crucial flow of oil to Europe.

And with a little arm-twisting, Russia demonstrated how it could ruin the small neighbouring economy unless it relented and agreed to restart supplies to western consumers.

Rarely in the news, Belarus remains a far more soviet republic than Russia itself, with strong state economic control and a political leadership under the shunned Alexander Lukashenko that has grown increasingly isolated from the outside world.

Intensely disliked by Russia's president Vladimir Putin on a personal level, Lukashenko's regime could expect little sympathy when it tried to impose a new transit tax on the exports as a way of making up for the more expensive gas prices it must now pay Russia.

Picking a fight with its impatient benefactors in the Kremlin could only end one way, but it did serve to remind the EU of how dependent European countries have become on Russia for oil and gas. Ironically, the mini-crisis hit in the same week the European Commission announced its own energy strategy, which now seems too little, too late when it urged the EU to speak with one voice when dealing with energy suppliers like Russia.

Many eastern European countries, like Poland, continue to receive almost all their oil through the ageing 2,500km route, which now seems badly misnamed as the Druzhba, or friendship pipeline, one of a few key arteries feeding the oil habit in western Europe. For example, Germany also receives around a quarter of its oil needs through the Druzhba, while Finland receives 80 per cent of all oil from Russia.

Although all the countries affected have sufficient reserves to meet immediate demand, the longer-term closure of the route would put added pressure on oil tankers to divert supplies towards Baltic ports, raising prices globally, all because of a little local row between Russia and Belarus.

In the latest instalment of Russia's energy battles, it was the former allies in Minsk that came off worse, following the long string of defeats suffered by companies like Shell and Yukos and other ex-Soviet republics like Ukraine and Georgia. All have lost against the will of the Kremlin to reassert dominance over Russia's most valuable natural assets, oil and gas, which now seems complete.

But western firms shouldn't presume it's the sign of more threats to come, insists the chief strategist with AlfaBank in Moscow, Chris Weafer.

"This is the wrong time for Europe to be panicking over Russia, it's now ready to move on to the next phase, to spend on its infrastructure," he says, pointing out that there are vast oil and gas fields right across the country, from the Arctic seas to the Asian coast, that are ripe for development. "It's not what they did, it's the way they did it. They handled it badly again, the same as in Ukraine," he said, pointing out that until this year, Belarus was paying Russia just one fifth of what western customers paid for the same gas. Russia has also given a commitment to raising domestic gas and oil prices as part of the price for entering the World Trade Organisation, he pointed out.

"Russia has been carrying these countries for years, way past the end of the Soviet Union, but instead of negotiating over a time frame, it seems to always end in a crisis," he said.

Although it may have appeared in western Europe as if Russia was yet again demonstrating its unreliability as a major partner for Europe, it's instead clearing up the inconsistencies that have been a legacy from Soviet times, suggest other commentators.

"More consistency in the treatment of the 'far abroad' and the 'near abroad' is a step in the right direction. In order for Russia to ensure that the delivery of supplies to Europe is secure and reliable, it is necessary to go through this transition period, during which the preferential treatment of some of the Commonwealth of Independent States countries is phased out. This, in turn, is expected to remove some of the barriers to creating a transparent, equal and stable framework of energy co-operation with the CIS and the EU in the longer term," commented Christopher Granville of Deutsche UFG.