Quartz: An opposition Russian deputy has an idea to weaken Moscow’s influence in Europe
The last time Ilya Ponomarev attracted international attention was in March, when he cast the lone “no” vote in the Russian Duma against his country’s annexation of Crimea. It made him a villain in Russia, where the annexation is extremely popular, but better liked in some European countries, where it is not.
Now, with Russian forces on the march in eastern Ukraine, Ponomarev is offering up his influence to help counterbalance Moscow’s chief leverage in Europe, which is its dominance of the continent’s natural gas supply.
Ponomarev tells Quartz that, to temper Russian influence, Europe needs to develop its shale gas reserves, as the US has—and that he can help by diminishing European political opposition to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the drilling method used to extract gas from shale.