Ukraine and Russia go to brink over huge gas price rise

Ukraine and Russia go to brink over huge gas price rise

· Kiev faces quadrupling of cost as subsidy withdrawn
· Threats from both sides ahead of January deadline

Tom Parfitt in Moscow
Tuesday December 27, 2005
The Guardian


Russia and Ukraine are on the brink of a political crisis over gas prices that symbolises the widening gulf between the two former Soviet countries.

The state-controlled Russian gas monopoly, Gazprom, is threatening to cut off flows on January 1 if Ukraine does not agree to pay quadrupled prices for the energy that comprises a third of its needs.

Ukraine currently buys Russian gas for its homes and factories at a heavily subsidised $50 (£29) per 1,000 cubic metres but a disgruntled Moscow wants to raise the cost to $230, in line with world prices.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,2763,1673955,00.html

Ukraine is screwed, the US isn't going to ship them cheap gas.

and Abkhazia's and Ajaria's ports are sealed to Saakashvili exporting to Costanta, Odessa, and Crimea--Turkey is their only hope, and neither Islamists nor liberals want to be the centerpiece of a Black Sea encirclement--and a prime target in WWIII.

http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-11-17-voa72.cfm

I especially like the pic of Berluscolini.

is roiling. A wild price hike in energy could bring about a color coded revolution of a different sort, this time without the assistance of various Western NGO's.

Folks there have figured out they got hoodwinked.

as I posted a few weeks back, just came back from visiting her native Ukraine. She was devastated over how things have gone to hell. Poverty is rapant, a complete lack of government regulation over food processing left her afraid to eat food from the 'competing' vendors, and a brief visit to a local hospital left her wondering what good 'capitalism' has done for her country. It's a disaster.

and all the port areas in Ukraine voted for Yanukovich, especially the Don river and its estuaries. There can be an uprising, or Russia can just pick off any shipping they get up from Reichskommisariat Kaukasien. And a larger war would involve Iran, which could easily bash in Azerbaijan and Georgia, even with a salient by the Kurds or the U.S. towards Rashd.
Geopolitics is fun! Unless you're a subject of it and it's Kissinger or Brzezinski doing the planning, and they don't know )(*#$# and they don't care how many die.

Kissinger and Zbig are fatuous blowhards, and war criminals.
The sort of morons who draw to inside straights every time.
The kind of chessplayers that get checkmated every time they "attack".
Of course, they've done really well for themselves personally ...

and :thumbsup: for informed geopolitics (both for current trends and historical (re)analysis...though you need a strong understanding of historical information to even begin analyzing current events on a geopolitical level)!

...and it can be fun, though it often turns what I had originally planned to be a short and witty post into a dry, lengthy essay that occasionally reaches dissertation level obtuseness.

See, I went a bit overboard between those ellipses up there :dunce:

welfare - sounds like he's getting what he wanted.

Something stinks.

Please. It's well known his ancestry goes back to German ethnic roots. It's simply not an appropriate topic for discourse. Condemn the man for his policies or his politics, but please, lay off the ethnic slurs.

It's simply a visual thing.

I thought we were the only country having an energy price crises.

left behind in the Ukraine when the Soviet Union fell? I don't think Russia is holding all the cards in this game.

After the cold war an agreement was established whereby all Nukes that were left in former
USSR republics would be transfered back to Russia.
That process has been completed some years ago...

:shrug: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn:

in search for cheep oil and damn all that get in it's way, all the other smaller nations that don't have the might or the "control the world" plans will be the ones that start the border wars that will escalate in to the huge regional wars. I have always thought the Iraq war was a complete folly, moron* being a moron* and trying to show the world that he* has a big dick and can carry out his* own personal family vendettas to right what ever bizarre wrong he* feels he* needs to correct all the while making money for his* fucked up friends.

Mean while, in the rest of the world, that doesn't have the standard of living or standard of consumption or standard of waste that we have, actually need fuel for basic necessities. So while we whittle away our armed forces in this stupid ass war of his*, desperate people try to survive on the basics and keep from freezing to death. And these same people who use gas to heat their homes will do what they need to do in order to continue to make that happen.

This is the first and certainly not the last of the "border disputes", this is just the coming attractions.

Looking at recent articles /1-3/ together, I cannot avoid asking one question: how come Russian ultra-liberals are so noisy? This cannot be just kitchen noises, and Western connections alone cannot explain their fury. Somebody on very top in Moscow must be behind their pro-Ukrainian rants on the gas war, and Illarionov appears to be one of them.

The conclusion is, Andrew Wilson's logic /4-6/ makes lots of sense, although not exactly the way he wants us to take it. The nature of Russian orangism is as virtual as anything in the post-Soviet space. In the end, it all comes from different conflicting factions of post-Soviet political and business elites.

Finally, there is one important aspect of Russian-Urkrainian row which Professor Wilson most certainly wants to keep in shade. Russian and Ukrainian military-defense complexes are still closely linked /7/, so, both orange revolution and gas crisis have very serious military strategic consequences.

1. Putin's economic adviser resigns: http://www.forbes.com/finance/feeds/afx/2005/12/27/afx2415322.html

2. V.Novodvorskaya. On Russian-Ukrainian gas war: http://grani.ru/opinion/novodvorskaya/m.99966.html

3. A.Piontkovsky. 2006 - year of Ukraine: http://grani.ru/Economy/m.100031.html

4. JRL 9324. Andrew Wilson. VIRTUAL POLITICS: 'POLITICAL TECHNOLOGY' AND THE CORRUPTION OF POST-SOVIET DEMOCRACY: http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/9324-5.cfm

5. Andrew Wilson. Virtual Politics: Faking Democracy in the Post-Soviet World: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300095457/qid=1135351800/

6. Andrew Wilson. Ukraine's Orange Revolution: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300112904/qid=1135352054/103-8742498-136143

7. Rian. Russian-Ukrainian gas dispute unrelated to heavy missiles use: http://en.rian.ru/russia/20051224/42682595.html

http://inplainview.monitor.us.tt/comm.PostSov.htm

This is Russia's nightmare...

they might not be getting any gas.

while the billionaires who control the Russian energy sector purchase majestic villas in the South of France.
Welome to capitalism!

who promoted the orange revolution, won't freeze.

(link here)

Ukrainian Fuel and Energy Minister Ivan Plachkov has dismissed information in the media that Ukraine and Turkmenistan have failed to sign an agreement on gas deliveries for 2006.

"The contract has been signed, sealed and delivered to Ukraine. All documents are in my suitcase," he told journalists on Tuesday in Kyiv.

(snip)

Asked whether Ukraine may cover a possible gas deficit with Turkmen gas, the minister answered negatively, adding that Uzbek and Kazakh gas transportation systems cannot provide for transit exceeding the volumes stated in the contract.