Russia Blackmails Neighbors, Cuts Off Gas
In its quest to dominate the region, Russia continues to bully and blackmail neighbors who are drifting towards the West. The main tool for Russia to use in its blackmailing and bullying attempts is the region’s dependence on Russian gas. Yesterday, Moscow cut off all gas deliveries to Bulgaria, Turkey, Germany, Romania, Greece, Czech Republic and Ukraine.
As the new moderate Republican blog Crimson Politics (it is more than a blog though: it has a forum and its goal is to help Republicans 2.0 become increasingly influential in the party) reports, Russia’s excuse to cut off all gas deliveries to these countries is that Ukraine did not pay for its gas (or tapped it illegally). Ukraine denies any wrongdoing, which is likely the truth considering the fact that it is incredibly cold in that country right now; no reasonable and moderate leader in his right mind would steal gas in the middle of the winter.
As CP’s Brian Kane points out, it is far more likely that Russia wants to punish Ukraine for its drift towards the West and its support for Georgia when the latter was brutally invaded by Russian forces. Ukraine was historically an ally of Russia, perhaps better described as a tool. The more Ukraine drifts towards the West and democracy, the less influential Russia will be in the region. Since Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev want to make Russia a super- or at least regional power, they cannot accept any independent thinking from former Soviet (satellite) states.
It is therefore not surprising that Russia punishes Ukraine. What is surprising, however, is that Moscow also punished the other countries mentioned in this article. Germany, Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania and the Czech Republic are all held hostage as well, which could mean two things: either Russia wants them to put pressure on Ukraine to give in to Russia’s demands every now and then, or it wants to let these countries know that they too are dependent on her for their well being.
Whatever the case, Russia’s latest act of imperialism and power politics should inspire those dependent on Russian gas to develop their own energy resources. Germany especially does not need to be dependent on Russia; it can take care of itself, if only the German government is willing to ignore the demands of environmental activists who would rather make Germany dependent on a bullying and imperialistic Russia than risk killing one or two birds (research shows, by the way, that exploitation of Germany’s gas resources will do little to no damage to the environment; nonetheless, the myth of destruction of the environment is kept alive and well by Greenpeace et al.).
Russia has shown its true face in the last year (or two), it is time for European countries to stop pretending that Moscow is or can be a friend. It is not and cannot; the Russian bear will use its strength whenever it can to oppress everyone else.
Thanks for covering this. Hungary also had its entire Russian gas supply stopped. This is probably 75% of the gas supply, the remainder being home drilled or imported from Austria. The current news is that a number of large gas users such as factories are closing today, shopping malls and similar places are adopting use reduction strategies (such as disabling automatic doors that allow too much heat out).
Temperatures below -10C are expected at the weekend, which clearly massively increases gas heating requirements. The estimate is that Hungary has in theory 60 days of reserves, but the reserves probably cannot be pumped fast enough to cover all uses.
The government seems to have prioritised home consumers as the last to be cut off – at gas is the main heating method this is probably wise.
a clearly erroneous conclusion to assume the Ukraine is always right, and Russia is always wrong. For one, it is the ukrainian side that was refusing to allow EU monitors to be present along its pipelines while the alleged theft of gas was ongoing. Russia was allowing full EU presence at all crossing points into the ukraine, the amounts going in are fully documented. What was coming out was also measured by the EU, and noone is arguing that those amounts dropped. Yet somehow when gas disappears on the Ukrainian territory it’s Russia’s fault?
punishment politics aside, why should a country enjoy preferential energy rates when the main product of its energy use — steel and wheat — are being sold at market rates? The ukraine saw tremendous profits from these industries (ukraine’s main exports) over the past few years, yet it did nothing to force the companies to improve energy efficiency and switch to market gas pricing. The free ride can’t last forever, and the time happens to be now.
I am sure that the Ukrainians are not entirely innocent of some “siphoning off” gas, but it was Russia not Ukraine which firstly reduced the flow of gas for onward pumping below the normal amounts and finally decided to stop all further gas supply entirely. Gazprom confirmed stopping gas supplies in its own press release dated Wednesday 7th January 2009. So regardless of Russian allegations of Ukrainian “theft” it was Russia which stopped supplies.