U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney aimed some tough talk at Russia Thursday, saying the country should not try to use its oil and gas supplies as "tools of intimidation and blackmail" to bully its neighbours.

Cheney also suggested to a summit of regional leaders in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, that Russian President Vladimir Putin is rolling back progress on democratic reforms.

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney has accused Russia of turning its energy resources into implements of blackmail.
(Mindaugas Kulbis/Associated Press)

"Russia has a choice to make," he said, urging Putin to recommit his government to reforms, rather than cracking down on its critics.

The vice-president's remarks were seen as a reaction to an incident in January that saw Russia cut off natural gas sales to Ukraine during a pricing dispute.

That move also disrupted gas supplies to Europe. Russia's state-owned Gazprom monopoly supplies about a quarter of Europe's natural gas, 80 per cent of which travels through Ukraine.

Pro-democracy activists have pointed out that Russia wanted to bill the pro-Western Ukrainian government four times as much for gas as it was charging pro-Moscow governments in Belarus, Azerbaijan and Armenia.

"Russia has nothing to fear and everything to gain from having strong, stable democracies on its borders," Cheney said Thursday.

His speech also took aim at the government in Belarus, where President Alexander Lukashenko's administration forcibly retained power after a disputed election earlier this year.

"Peaceful demonstrators have been beaten, dissidents have vanished and a climate of fear prevails under a government that subverts free elections," Cheney told the Balkan and Black Sea leaders at the Vilnius summit.

"There is no place in a Europe whole and free for a regime of this kind."