Poroshenko claims Ukraine is now being offered weapons by NATO.

[Doll]

And Russia got their ex president, Yanukovych. Free gas in exchange for control over a nation. Russia got the better deal.

I don't think so. Russia wants money for gas.

[BillyB]

I don't think so. Russia wants money for gas.

If they want money for gas so badly, why did they take in and protect Ukraine's ex president after he got ousted, you know, the guy who didn't pay the gas bill? He served Russia well when he was in power.

[Isthmus]

I don't think so. Russia wants money for gas.

Billy Bob is correct. If Ukraine kept Yanukovich and joined the CCCP v.2.1 Customs Union the Kremlin was ready to sign up to a long term subsidised gas deal with Kiev IIRC.

[Doll]

If they want money for gas so badly, why did they take in and protect Ukraine's ex president after he got ousted, you know, the guy who didn't pay the gas bill? He served Russia well when he was in power.

how is it linked?
You sell the product, you want money for it.

[Doll]

joined the CCCP

Joined what, excuse me?

[Bee Farmer]

Bee Farmer, Kazakhstan also relinquished the nuclear weapons it inherited from the ex CCCP arsenal. Given the rumblings coming from the Kremlin recently if I was in power in Astana I would be looking to re-acquire this capability ASAP.

I stand corrected.  I only knew about Ukraine giving up their nukes.

*sigh* It's a shame so many former USSR states had such foolish leaders who would disarm their countries.

As Mao Zedong said, "Political power comes from the barrel of a gun."  When you give away your guns, you are at the mercy of those who still have their guns.

[Isthmus]

Joined what, excuse me?

The Eurasian Customs Union. Putin's idea as the platform to reinvent the USSR, I call it CCCP MkII  This Customs Union will mean nothing if Kazakhstan leaves it before it commences though as it will only be Russia + Belarus.

[Doll]

The Eurasian Customs Union. Putin's idea as the platform to reinvent the USSR, I call it CCCP MkII  This Customs Union will mean nothing if Kazakhstan leaves it before it commences though as it will only be Russia + Belarus.

Ah, you call it!

[lordtiberius]

Putin got Crimea.

Saying that is like a necrophiliac bragging about his conquest.  So what?  Crimea is an economic basket case.  Even the Putin admirers admit that which is why the land bridge is so necessary.

He's getting his way in Ukraine more than the West is.

At best, that statement is subject and even you concede it can be argued the other way.  He picked a fight with a country the size of Texas with double the population of Texas.

In other words, he's winning. When he' stops acquiring real estate, he understands in a few years the sanctions will go away and everybody will be back to business as usual.

Seriously?  Business as usual?  Would you do business in Russia?  Who in their right mind would want to go there?  What can be got there that can't be got somewhere else with less headache and cheaper.  I don't know what Jackson Pollack you are looking at, but as a businessman and you if you had surplus capital would you really invest it in a place like Russia?

The Europeans have to buy gas from them, but drive the price of gas below $ 90 and they are Zimbabawe with nukes.  Mexico and Egypt are less a failed state than the land that Vlad rules.

Unless the West is willing to do more than sanctions, Putin is going to win.

Despite the froth of Putin's admirers here and elsewhere, the West has been a non-actor in this whole affair even before Euromaidan.  There is NO WAY Putin is going to win.  He is waging a Chechen style war which isn't working in Syria.  And its not working Ukraine.

He may take Ukraine.  He is modernizing his Army very rapidly.  He has failed to take the parts of Ukraine that he wants.  But he may take Ukraine. We took Iraq very easily.  It was holding Iraq that was hard. 

Even if the West armed the Ukrainians with muskets, there is no way in God's green earth Putin will in Ukraine.  he doesn't have the Army to or the strategic maneuver to fight and win an insurgency which is what he will have  if he tries to hold Ukraine.   

Also what is going to happen when Putin takes Ukraine.  Poroshenko is gone, in exile or dead.  Who takes over the resistance?  It will probably be someone more radical.  Where will he get his funding?  From the CIA?  No.  From the Qataris, people even more amoral than anyone here.  Ukrainians can more easily slide in and out of Russian society than Dagestanis and Chechens.  This new Ukrainian resistance will start a terror campaign inside Russia.  Ukraine will be a bleeding ground for conscripts sent a kind of European Afghanistan.  It is madness, but this is the kind of insanity that happens when you ride the back of the tiger and risk all on the fortunes of war.

[BillyB]

how is it linked?
You sell the product, you want money for it.

Russia bought a president, they want benefits from the nation the president is from. Don't think Russia didn't gain anything.

Crimea is an economic basket case. 

Crimea got Putin up to 80% popularity rating at home. Russia also gains access to more of the Black Sea which hold a trillion dollars worth of natural resources. If Crimea is a basket case, give it to me. I'll drain it only for a billion and everybody else can have the leftovers.

[Isthmus]

Ah, you call it!

I can't take credit for the terminology,  I am fairly sure I have read some journalists refer to it in similar terms  But I don't think it will come about after Putin's aggression on Ukraine. This will hasten the demise of the 'Russosphere' IMHO. What we have is a cultural/civilisational zone descending into internal war and chaos. This happens when Empires are in serious decline and are starting to decay. The long term beneficiary of Putin's stupidity will be China I predict.

[lordtiberius]

Crimea got Putin up to 80% popularity rating at home.

And Hitler made no public appearances after Stalingrad . . .

Russia also gains access to more of the Black Sea which hold a trillion dollars worth of natural resources.

Hitler was master of Europe in 1942.  He wanted peace with Britain in 1940 after he took over France.  You know the rest of the story.  You are looking at this all wrong Billy.  You can slap and beat a woman into she is on the edge of death.  The fact is she is still a woman and if that woman is your wife, you are a monster.  There is no disguising who Putin is anymore.  That is why Putin's legion of admirers are dwindling and embarrassed by him.

If Crimea is a basket case, give it to me. I'll drain it only for a billion and everybody else can have the leftovers.

You will be known forever as a thief and meet a thief's fate.  If you were to trade places with the biggest loser you know and Stalin at the height of his power and you had to face Saint Peter, who would you rather be?

He can't win, Billy.  Not in the near term or short term, why you can't see that.  I don't know.

[Boethius]

Who are you to dictate what a fair price for gas is?  Russia is free to charge what the market will bear.  The west doesn't sit on the resource yet appartently still thinks they should dictate a 'fair' price. 

Fathertime!

Nobody is "dictating what a fair price of gas" is.  What has been arbitrated is terms of contracts.  Gazprom has lost most of those arbitrations because it didn't charge in accordance with the contract it signed.

[Isthmus]

War is a beast that cannot be tamed easily,  once it is off the leash the person who released it cannot necessarily control where it finishes. Proven historical dynamic that has been repeated over and over again.

[Boethius]

Ukraine got it for free.

No, it didn't.  The disputes between Gazprom and Ukraine almost always have a background of dispute on the fundamentals of the terms of the contract.  In each case, Ukraine has paid its debt.  That likely would have been the case with the current dispute, which is heading to arbitration, had Russia not invaded Ukraine (first by proxy, then directly).

[Boethius]

Clearly if given the chance western powers would turn Russia into a slave state if they could through neocolonialism and multinationals. You got western people trying to dictate the price  russia sells their gas at while I paid 100 dollars for small part on my Grohe (German) faucet. Russia can charge what they feel they need to until somebody sells for less and takes their customers away.

Fathertime!

Markets dictate the price when the contracts are negotiated.  Arbitration courts decide if the price negotiated, which is usually based on several factors, is what was actually charged.


Russia has a habit, through Gazprom, of using gas as political leverage.  It has been able to do that with Ukraine, which is a weak state, and to some degree, with the EU, because EU countries had extensive business interests in Russia.  But, it appears those days  are over.  Russia has signed a contract with China that all experts have stated is far, far, less lucrative than its sales to the EU.  This crisis has also awoken the EU to the dangers of relying on a thug regime for its gas.  It may as well deal with Iran.

[Boethius]

Even as I despise Putin and the majority of Russians who support him, it is foolish to think that he is not winning or that his actions mean the downfall of Russia, etc.

The world has too many problems right now in too many places.

The citizens of USA and the government of USA are tired of all these problems and don't want to get further involved.  The same goes for the western European countries.

Our current time has given Putin a huge opportunity and he is taking it.  Putin and Russia will end up keeping all territory that they want to, and all sanctions against Russia will be lifted.  The world will let out a sigh of relief that it is over, except for the citizens of Ukraine and the families who have lost loved ones.

At some point in the future, Russia will move again against other countries.

And at some more distant point, the countries of the world will say; how did we let this happen.  We saw what happened with Germany's expansion pre-WWII and vowed it would not happen again.  But we did let it happen.

I only hope that the USA will stop issuing visitors visas to all Russians.  They are a thoroughly despicable people.

It doesn't matter how many of you say,  oh no, my parent's in law are wonderful people, the Russian people are so great and warm once you get into their homes, bla bla bla.

Everyone here knows it down deep just how rotten to the core these people are, but can't for obvious reasons bring yourselves to say it or even think it.

I don't believe most Russians are rotten to the core, nor despicable. 

[southernX]

Nobody is "dictating what a fair price of gas" is.  What has been arbitrated is terms of contracts.  Gazprom has lost most of those arbitrations because it didn't charge in accordance with the contract it signed.

bo as per usual FT /DOLL havnt read up on gazprom and how they operate

SX

[sleepycat]

The long term beneficiary of Putin's stupidity will be China

The benefits to China should start to flow in the near future. China gets gas at a rock bottom price, and a junior partner in Russia to boss around. Not a bad deal for China at all...

[lordtiberius]

China would rather be our frenemy than partner with Russia where it is the senoir partner.

[fathertime]

bo as per usual FT /DOLL havnt read up on gazprom and how they operate

SX

I'd say that YOU are the one that needs to catch up on the reading.  You made no mention of the things bothius spoke of.  You can check for ypurself but your complaint was regarding pricing based on volume and how weak the country was, not specifically the sudden change of pricing on a previously negoiated contract which is not something i was necessarily defending.  I think you are now changing your story. Are you going to admit to changing your argument? 

Fathertime!

[Doll]

I don't believe most Russians are rotten to the core, nor despicable.

Boe, listen what our Big Brothers tell you to do (think).
 

[Doll]

I'd say that YOU are the one that needs to catch up on the reading.  You made no mention of the things bothius spoke of.  You can check for ypurself but your complaint was regarding pricing based on volume and how weak the country was, not specifically the sudden change of pricing on a previously negoiated contract which is not something i was necessarily defending.  I think you are now changing your story. Are you going to admit to changing your argument? 

Fathertime!

FT, leave them alone!
It is hard to talk to brainwashed people.
 
 
 

[Belvis]

FT, leave them alone!
It is hard to talk to brainwashed people.

No, no, I find interesting to read this discussion. Incompetence of brainwashed people is amusing, as well as their reaction to crush of Matrix they are living in.

BTW, the price of gas for Chinа (~350$/1000 m) is close to that one for Germany. Production cost (cost of only gas extraction) in 2012 was slightly above 30$/1000 m. Main part of gas price is taxes, so though 350 $/1000 m could be not very good for Gazprom this price is just fine for Russia.

[Boethius]

The $350 per thousand cubic meters you cite, Belvis, is analysts' speculation, as the terms of the contract are not disclosed.


Western Europe paid, on average, $380.50 per thousand cubic meters to Gazprom in 2013.  Eastern Europe paid more.