UPDATE: The anti-Gazprom Serbian politician, Mladjan Dinkic, has apparently been forced to resign today.

We’ve seen Moscow apply the Rumsfeldian divide-and-conquer disaggregation technique to split Europe from the United States on NATO and missiles, split East and West Europe on energy, and now, split the individual polity of Serbia over the Gazprom takeover of the state energy monopoly NIS. 

Today the Associated Press is running a report on a split that has opened in the Serbian government over the energy deal, with Deputy Prime Minister Ivica Dacic pushing the Kremlin line to sell NIS without any guarantees on what they would get in return – the main argument being that they can ill-afford to risk angering their most important “strategic ally.”  Dacic is opposed by the Minister of Economy Mladjan Dinkic, who represents the pro-Western party, arguing that it would be extremely unwise for Serbia to hand over control of its energy sector (and the accompanying political influence which would come with it), if Gazprom is unable to guarantee that South Stream will indeed be build, and that Serbia would be given a role as a regional distribution hub.