"... Cyprus has until now frozen out Russian interests from offshore gas concessions, snubbing a low bid by Novatek, a Russian company whose directors include Gennady Timchenko, a wealthy oil trader and judo club acquaintance of President Vladimir V. Putin’s. In talks last week in Moscow over a possible loan to Cyprus, Russia made clear that it expected a piece of the gas pie for its own companies, according to Cypriot officials and politicians.
In Russia’s view, Cyprus, which already has two British military bases, a legacy of the country’s colonial past, would also be an ideal place to set up a small naval installation should the Kremlin lose access to Tartus, a Syrian port that risks being swamped by that nation’s civil war.
The Moscow talks yielded no deal and dashed hopes that Russia might ride to the rescue. But many Cypriots still view Russia as a useful counterweight to bullying by Brussels. “We are not a Trojan horse for Russia in Europe, but we are trying to protect our interests like everyone does,” said Petros Zarounas, a diplomatic adviser to the Democratic Party, part of the governing coalition.
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... a Russian-language radio station here led its news bulletins with reports of a “direct strike against Russia’s position” in the Mediterranean by Secretary of State John Kerry.
The report, on Russian Wave radio, said that Mr. Kerry had telephoned Cyprus’s finance minister and told him Washington was ready to help out, as long as Cyprus guaranteed a bigger role for the United States in gas concessions and raised the levy on large foreign depositors, many of them Russians, to 15 percent.
American officials said they knew of no such call by Mr. Kerry, and the radio station’s news anchor, Nedezhda Braun, acknowledged that her report might not be true. ..."
