RUSSIA USING OIL AS A WEAPON

You wanna know why we're in Iraq? Because the Russians (and the Chinese) are in Iran. And this is what they do with oil.

Three days after the Czech Republic signed an agreement with the United States to host a tracking radar for an antiballistic missile system that Russia vehemently opposes, the authorities in Prague said the flow of Russian oil to their country was beginning to dwindle.

In a statement on Friday, Czech officials declined to link the reduced supply to the deal signed Tuesday in Prague. Still, though the flow of oil can vary for technical reasons, it was clear that the Czechs suspected a connection and intended to ask the Russians to explain the decline.

Russia maintains that the missiles meant to shoot down other missiles pose a threat to its own nuclear deterrence. The Bush administration says they are intended instead to counter a threat from Iran, which launched nine missiles on Wednesday.

In one of his first foreign policy tests since becoming Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev said this week that Russia intended to retaliate. “We are extremely upset by this situation,” Mr. Medvedev said at a news conference in Japan, where he was attending a Group of 8 summit meeting.

“We will not be hysterical about this, but we will think of retaliatory steps,” he said.

Shipments to Czech oil refineries through the Druzhba pipeline, which ties Siberian fields to the Czech Republic, are declining, the Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade said. It did not say by how much.