Financial Times: Russia tightens bearhug on oil and gas

Meeting foreign experts at his Moscow residence last month, Russian president Vladimir Putin tried to distance the Kremlin from Rosneft’s multibillion-dollar takeover of TNK-BP.

Mr Putin had “mixed feelings”, he said, about a move that went against the “trend” of reducing state involvement in the economy. He had agreed largely in order to help extricate BP from a conflict with its oligarch partners that often involved “fighting with their bare hands”.  MORE