Lukoil is said to be in talks to acquire their combined 30% stake at a small fraction of the price they would have to pay in the open market

Well, this is plainly incorrect: There was a very detailed post at The Fistful of Euros. At the moment of their writing (Nov 23), Lukoil was offering something like 28 Euro/share while on Nov 21 Repsol was worth 13.61 on the open market. 14 Euro per share could be a fire sale price, but the offer is for twice that amount.

In general, the article strikes me as essentially racist. They try really hard to confuse the reader into thinking that Lukoil is state-owned, while in fact it's a private company, and included into the article for no reason a statement by Spanish Economy Minister Pedro Solbes who opposed a sale of Sacyr's Repsol stake to Gazprom (never heard of this deal). The Brussels Journal is clearly afraid of openly acknowledging that it's the Russian smell of money which they object to, and try to mask ethnic discrimination behind mythical state ownership and discounted price.

One of these days, a significant part of the European media will get hit by a huge class action anti-discrimination suit. I hope all awards would go into improving health services in Russia.