Gas Pipeline and effects to Ukraine

[wxman]

Is there a Ukrainian gas pipeline in the gaza strip now?   :noidea:

Yea, it's called GazaProm. 

[Diplomacy]

Great One WXMAN!

[ECOCKS]

Dittoes.....

[Mishenka]

Good evening all,
It seems we quickly forget the devaluation of the Rubles exchange rate at $1 US Dollar = 30.580 Russian Rouble

1 Russian Rouble (RUB) = 0.035 US Dollar (USD)  typicaly a ruble is worth 3 cents now. In light of the Ukraine trading at 12..5 cents and rubles at .03 cents, what are we talking abuout in real money here? What dollar value are these gas contracts written at? what will their dollars be worth at the continuing decline? in 3 months the ruble has fallen 25% and keeps loosing. Money on the street is more expensive than bank rates.
 Friday, January 9, 2009
1 US Dollar = 8.638 Ukraine Hryvnia
1 Ukraine Hryvnia (UAH) = 0.125 US Dollar (USD)
Interbank cash exchage rate +/- 4%

[Diplomacy]

My guess is the contracts are written in US dollars.  Is there an option c?

[ECOCKS]

Good evening all,
It seems we quickly forget the devaluation of the Rubles exchange rate at $1 US Dollar = 30.580 Russian Rouble

1 Russian Rouble (RUB) = 0.035 US Dollar (USD)  typicaly a ruble is worth 3 cents now. In light of the Ukraine trading at 12..5 cents and rubles at .03 cents, what are we talking abuout in real money here? What dollar value are these gas contracts written at? what will their dollars be worth at the continuing decline? in 3 months the ruble has fallen 25% and keeps loosing. Money on the street is more expensive than bank rates.
 Friday, January 9, 2009
1 US Dollar = 8.638 Ukraine Hryvnia
1 Ukraine Hryvnia (UAH) = 0.125 US Dollar (USD)
Interbank cash exchage rate +/- 4%

Still officially 7.7 UAH to the dollar here.

[Mishenka]

Right Ed, but unfortunately, it is what the bank says it is at a given time of day. At the time of my post, thats what the bank gave me.  What is official at the bank is not official at the airport or from one bank to another. Since few people in Russia trust or use banks, the exchange rate on the street is what we go buy in most cases. While a 12.5 cent difference is not much in a few doallars, it adds up to huge money at  million or so.

Back to my question, in any case,  how does the exchange rate and devaluation affect the price of Gazprom contracts through out the Eu and FSU?
Mishka

[Diplomacy]

Russia-

1.  Has a huge war chest but has screwed BP and other major players.  This will bite them bad
2.  Has been spending countless billions to try and "protect" ruble.  Diminishing the war chest each time
3.  The war chest will go down and another financial crisis similar to 90's

4.  If Oil keeps down this low, it crushes Russia as it is today

5.  Russia did not invest in itself and is a Resource Price dependent country

6.  Russia has yet to show it can handle decade long infrastructure projects except NKVD/KGB/FSB.

7.  If war chest is gone and oil rises.  Nobody is going to invest there without thinking long and hard.  Or given very advantageous contracts, that of course will be "renegotiated"

Time only answers this, but this is my crystal ball.

[ECOCKS]

Plenty of options on who to blame in this, take your pick(s):

Why we don't have gas
By Martin Ehl / Hospodářské noviny / January 9, 2009
Prague Daily Monitor

Politicians and gas companies in central Europe are looking mainly to the future:

How long will the supplies suffice, how much gas will come through other pipelines and when will the Ukrainians and the Russians turn on the taps again? But taking a look back and trying to answer the question why we are suddenly without gas could help them too.

Option one: It is a business dispute. Ukraine's Naftogaz and Russia's Gazprom have been unable to agree on prices. This is suggested by the fact that the financial crisis has hit both countries seriously - the Russians need money for gas and the Ukrainians do not have money for gas.

Option two: Russia wants to pressure Ukraine, and the EU has become its hostage. Moscow has sensed that Kiev could come under its influence again thanks to the quarrelling Ukrainian politicians.

Option three: Russians (both officials and the mafia) have lost control over the profits coming from the nontransparent gas transit via Ukraine. The extent of embezzlement has exceeded the level that the Kremlin is used to. Corresponding to this option would be the statement by Naftogaz head Oleh Dubyna who said he wanted new contracts without any mediators.

Option four: Russia wants the EU to allow it to build gas routes outside Ukraine - that means Nord Stream and South Stream. However, central Europe does not like these routes, for it would lose transit fees as well as a direct connection to Russian sources as punishment for its "disobedience".

Option five: The well-stocked Ukraine has entrapped Russia, which is fighting for its reputation as a reliable partner. This interpretation is suggested by the thus-far lax stance of Ukrainian politicians on the crisis.

Option six: Russia is running out of gas and is escalating the dispute with Ukraine to hide a shortage of investment in production and infrastructure. This is suggested by the warnings of experts who say that politicised companies controlled by the Kremlin prefer immediate profits to long-term investments.

Option seven: The EU is unable to negotiate with Russia and Ukraine as a united strong partner. And Moscow and Kiev benefit from that. The EU's inability to produce at least a rudimentary energy policy is sufficient proof.

So why don't we have gas? None of the answers can stand up on its own, but a combination of all of them can.


Translated with permission by the Prague Daily Monitor.

[kievstar]

Yesterday in Brussels was a very good show as they blocked off the streets for the meeting as many protesters were here in Brussels.  Was a pain going home last night and unfortunately the root cause was not solved. But I think Russia / Ukraine like the attention and power they have over Europe.

[OlgaH]

EU has its own reason to warn Ukraine

The premier said mechanisms to monitor Russian gas transit to Europe should be created as soon as possible to ensure the energy security of European consumers.

Putin showed journalists documents, drafted by independent foreign company SGS, proving Ukraine illegally siphoned off Russian Europe-bound gas.
http://www.turkishweekly.net/news/63019/russia-ready-to-pay-market-price-for-gas-transit-via-ukraine-pm.html

[Mir]

You're the one wearing the pink goggles if you're thinking war usually happens without civillian deaths.  Have you even looked at the link I provided?  How is it possible to pinch out militants and bomb their war structures if they grab their own children and put them on the rooftops? 

What solution have you got for Israel, abandon their land and go live somewhere else, for fear of harming the live shields of Hamas?  Pretty much anything Israel does for its protection will get slammed by you people.

And if it does anything wrong it is justified by you people?

No one should justify what Hamas does but use thas as an excuse for atrocities is wrong.

lying silence of those who know" by John Pilger [antiwar.com]‏

 
"When the truth is replaced by silence," the Soviet dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko said, "the silence is a lie."
 

Subject: john Pilger on gaza (antiwar.com)
Date: 1/8/2009 7:21:07 A.M. Eastern Standard Time
 

 
antiwar.com
January 8, 2009
 
Holocaust Denied
The lying silence of those who know
by John Pilger
 
"When the truth is replaced by silence," the Soviet dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko said, "the silence is a lie." It may appear the silence is broken on Gaza. The cocoons of murdered children, wrapped in green, together with boxes containing their dismembered parents and the cries of grief and rage of everyone in that death camp by the sea, can be viewed on al-Jazeera and YouTube, even glimpsed on the BBC. But Russia's incorrigible poet was not referring to the ephemeral we call news; he was asking why those who knew the why never spoke it and so denied it. Among the Anglo-American intelligentsia, this is especially striking. It is they who hold the keys to the great storehouses of knowledge: the historiographies and archives that lead us to the why.

They know that the horror now raining on Gaza has little to do with Hamas or, absurdly, "Israel's right to exist." They know the opposite to be true: that Palestine's right to exist was canceled 61 years ago and the expulsion and, if necessary, extinction of the indigenous people was planned and executed by the founders of Israel. They know, for example, that the infamous "Plan D" resulted in the murderous depopulation of 369 Palestinian towns and villages by the Haganah (Jewish army) and that massacre upon massacre of Palestinian civilians in such places as Deir Yassin, al-Dawayima, Eilaboun, Jish, Ramle and Lydda are referred to in official records as "ethnic cleansing." Arriving at a scene of this carnage, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, was asked by a general, Yigal Allon, "What shall we do with the Arabs?" Ben-Gurion, reported the Israeli historian Benny Morris, "made a dismissive, energetic gesture with his hand and said, ‘Expel them'. The order to expel an entire population "without attention to age" was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, a future prime minister promoted by the world's most efficient propaganda as a peacemaker. The terrible irony of this was addressed only in passing, such as when the Mapan Party co-leader Meir Ya'ari noted "how easily" Israel's leaders spoke of how it was "possible and permissible to take women, children and old men and to fill the roads with them because such is the imperative of strategy … who remembers who used this means against our people during the [Second World] war … we are appalled."

Every subsequent "war" Israel has waged has had the same objective: the expulsion of the native people and the theft of more and more land. The lie of David and Goliath, of perennial victim, reached its apogee in 1967 when the propaganda became a righteous fury that claimed the Arab states had struck first. Since then, mostly Jewish truth-tellers such as Avi Schlaim, Noam Chomsky, the late Tanya Reinhart, Neve Gordon, Tom Segev, Yuri Avnery, Ilan Pappe and Norman Finklestein have dispatched this and other myths and revealed a state shorn of the humane traditions of Judaism, whose unrelenting militarism is the sum of an expansionist, lawless and racist ideology called zionism.

 "It seems," wrote the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe on 2 January, "that even the most horrendous crimes, such as the genocide in Gaza, are treated as desperate events, unconnected to anything that happened in the past and not associated with any ideology or system … Very much as the apartheid ideology explained the oppressive policies of the South African government, this ideology – in its most consensual and simplistic variety – has allowed all the Israeli governments in the past and the present to dehumanize the Palestinians wherever they are and strive to destroy them. The means altered from period to period, from location to location, as did the narrative covering up these atrocities. But there is a clear pattern [of genocide]."

In Gaza, the enforced starvation and denial of humanitarian aid, the piracy of life-giving resources such as fuel and water, the denial of medicines and treatment, the systematic destruction of infrastructure and the killing and maiming of the civilian population, 50 per cent of whom are children, meet the international standard of the Genocide Convention. "Is it an irresponsible overstatement," asked Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and international law authority at Princeton University, "to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not."

In describing a "holocaust-in-the making," Falk was alluding to the Nazis' establishment of Jewish ghettos in Poland. For one month in 1943, the captive Polish Jews led by Mordechaj Anielewiz fought off the German army and the SS, but their resistance was finally crushed and the Nazis exacted their final revenge. Falk is also a Jew. Today's holocaust-in-the-making, which began with Ben-Gurion's Plan D, is in its final stages. The difference today is that it is a joint US-Israeli project. The F-16 jet fighters, the 250-pound "smart" GBU-39 bombs supplied on the eve of the attack on Gaza, having been approved by a Congress dominated by the Democratic Party, plus the annual $2.4 billion in war-making "aid," give Washington de facto control. It beggars belief that President-elect Obama was not informed. Outspoken on Russia's war in Georgia and the terrorism in Mumbai, Obama's silence on Palestine marks his approval, which is to be expected, given his obsequiousness to the Tel Aviv regime and its lobbyists during the presidential campaign and his appointment of Zionists as his secretary of state, chief of staff and principal Middle East advisers. When Aretha Franklin sings "Think," her wonderful 1960s anthem to freedom, at Obama's inauguration on 21 January, I trust someone with the brave heart of Muntadar al-Zaidi, the shoe-thrower, will shout: "Gaza!"

The asymmetry of conquest and terror is clear. Plan D is now "Operation Cast Lead," which is the unfinished "Operation Justified Vengeance." The latter was launched by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001 when, with Bush's approval, he used F-16s against Palestinian towns and villages for the first time. In the same year, the authoritative Jane's Foreign Report disclosed that the Blair government had given Israel the "green light" to attack the West Bank after it was shown Israel's secret designs for a bloodbath. It was typical of New Labor Party's enduring, cringing complicity in Palestine's agony. However, the 2001 Israeli plan, reported Jane's, needed the "trigger" of a suicide bombing which would cause "numerous deaths and injuries [because] the 'revenge' factor is crucial." This would "motivate Israeli soldiers to demolish the Palestinians." What alarmed Sharon and the author of the plan, General Shaul Mofaz, the Israeli Chief of Staff, was a secret agreement between Yasser Arafat and Hamas to ban suicide attacks. On 23 November, 2001, Israeli agents assassinated the Hamas leader, Mahmud Abu Hunud, and got their "trigger"; the suicide attacks resumed in response to his killing.

Something uncannily similar happened on 5 November last, when Israeli special forces attacked Gaza, killing six people. Once again, they got their propaganda "trigger." A ceasefire initiated and sustained by the Hamas government – which had imprisoned its violators – was shattered by the Israeli attack and homemade rockets were fired into what used to be Palestine before its Arab occupants were "cleansed." The On 23 December, Hamas offered to renew the ceasefire, but Israel's charade was such that its all-out assault on Gaza had been planned six months earlier, according to the Israeli daily Ha'aretz.

Behind this sordid game is the "Dagan Plan," named after General Meir Dagan, who served with Sharon in his bloody invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Now head of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence organization, Dagan is the author of a "solution" that has seen the imprisonment of Palestinians behind a ghetto wall snaking across the West Bank and in Gaza, effectively a concentration camp. The establishment of a quisling government in Ramallah under Mohammed Abbas is Dagan's achievement, together with a hasbara (propaganda) campaign relayed through a mostly supine, if intimidated western media, notably in America, that says Hamas is a terrorist organization devoted to Israel's destruction and to "blame" for the massacres and siege of its own people over two generations, long before its creation. "We have never had it so good," said the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Gideon Meir in 2006. "The hasbara effort is a well-oiled machine." In fact, Hamas's real threat is its example as the Arab world's only democratically elected government, drawing its popularity from its resistance to the Palestinians' oppressor and tormentor. This was demonstrated when Hamas foiled a CIA coup in 2007, an event ordained in the western media as "Hamas's seizure of power." Likewise, Hamas is never described as a government, let alone democratic. Neither is its proposal of a ten-year truce as a historic recognition of the "reality" of Israel and support for a two-state solution with just one condition: that the Israelis obey international law and end their illegal occupation beyond the 1967 borders. As every annual vote in the UN General Assembly demonstrates, 99 per cent of humanity concurs. On 4 January, the president of the General Assembly, Miguel d'Escoto, described the Israeli attack on Gaza as a "monstrosity."

When the monstrosity is done and the people of Gaza are even more stricken, the Dagan Plan foresees what Sharon called a "1948-style solution" – the destruction of all Palestinian leadership and authority followed by mass expulsions into smaller and smaller "cantonments" and perhaps finally into Jordan. This demolition of institutional and educational life in Gaza is designed to produce, wrote Karma Nabulsi, a Palestinian exile in Britain, "a Hobbesian vision of an anarchic society: truncated, violent, powerless, destroyed, cowed … Look to the Iraq of today: that is what [Sharon] had in store for us, and he has nearly achieved it."

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi is an American writer on Palestine. She has a Jewish mother and an Iraqi Muslim father. "Holocaust denial is anti-Semitic," she wrote on 31 December. "But I'm not talking about World War Two, Mahmoud Ahmedinijad (the president of Iran) or Ashkenazi Jews. What I'm referring to is the holocaust we are all witnessing and responsible for in Gaza today and in Palestine over the past 60 years … Since Arabs are Semites, US-Israeli policy doesn't get more anti-Semitic than this." She quoted Rachel Corrie, the young American who went to Palestine to defend Palestinians and was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer. "I am in the midst of a genocide," wrote Corrie, "which I am also indirectly supporting and for which my government is largely responsible."

Reading the words of both, I am struck by the use of "responsibility." Breaking the lie of silence is not an esoteric abstraction but an urgent responsibility that falls to those with the privilege of a platform. With the BBC cowed, so too is much of journalism, merely allowing vigorous debate within unmovable invisible boundaries, ever fearful of the smear of anti-Semitism. The unreported news, meanwhile, is that the death toll in Gaza is the equivalent of 18,000 dead in Britain. Imagine, if you can.

Then there are the academics, the deans and teachers and researchers. Why are they silent as they watch a university bombed and hear the Association of University Teachers in Gaza plea for help? Are British universities now, as Terry Eagleton believes, no more than "intellectual Tescos, churning out a commodity known as graduates rather than greengroceries"?

Then there are the writers. In the dark year of 1939, the Third Writers' Congress was held at Carnegie Hall in New York and the likes of Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein sent messages and spoke up to ensure the lie of silence was broken. By one account, 3,500 jammed the auditorium and a thousand were turned away. Today, this mighty voice of realism and morality is said to be obsolete; the literary review pages affect an ironic hauteur of irrelevance; false symbolism is all. As for the readers, their moral and political imagination is to be pacified, not primed. The anti-Muslim Martin Amis expressed this well in Visiting Mrs. Nabokov: "The dominance of the self is not a flaw, it is an evolutionary characteristic; it is just how things are."

If that is how things are, we are diminished as a civilized society. For what happens in Gaza is the defining moment of our time, which either grants the impunity of war criminals the immunity of our silence, while we contort our own intellect and morality, or gives us the power to speak out. For the moment I prefer my own memory of Gaza: of the people's courage and resistance and their "luminous humanity," as Karma Nabulsi put it. On my last trip there, I was rewarded with a spectacle of Palestinian flags fluttering in unlikely places. It was dusk and children had done this. No one told them to do it. They made flagpoles out of sticks tied together, and a few of them climbed on to a wall and held the flag between them, some silently, others crying out. They do this every day when they know foreigners are leaving, believing the world will not forget them.
 




 

[kievstar]

I can pay an independent company money to say Putin is an idiot.  Does not mean anything.  Russia and Ukraine were very friendly here in Brussels.  They acted like they have a deal but want something from EU.  Maybe they both are trying to drive up market price.

[ECOCKS]

I can pay an independent company money to say Putin is an idiot.  Does not mean anything.  Russia and Ukraine were very friendly here in Brussels.  They acted like they have a deal but want something from EU.  Maybe they both are trying to drive up market price.

Wouldn't surprise me, they all know each other and many are related through marriage as well as business partnerships.

BTW, exchange rates popped to 8.6 - 9.3 on my street today.

[OlgaH]

I can pay an independent company money to say Putin is an idiot. 

So your underline is that SGS is corrupted 
http://www.sgs.com

[kievstar]

OlgaH, were all corrupt.  Some more than others. I tend to be a little corrupt myself and ok with a good bribe.  I have a feeling Ukraine did steal some gas - President of Ukraine has about 100 homes according to some people and he needs to keep them warm during the winter as his renters will not pay rent if cold.

[kievstar]

Here is a good article on the situation and looks like Russia over paid for its gas from Turkmenistan's and maybe a 480% annualized late fee on Ukraine? Is Gazprom a transit of gas too like Ukraine?

Russia, Ukraine And Natural Gas: A Quarrel Among Thieves

SALT LAKE CITY, UT -- Three years after the last drama involving Russia, Ukraine and gas supplies to Europe, here we are again. Russia's monopoly supplier Gazprom cut off gas shipments to Ukraine on New Year's Day because of alleged unpaid bills, and by Jan. 7 no gas was moving across Ukraine to the European Union either.

 
A man warms himself near a stove in a bar in the town of Belovo, Bulgaria.

Since the EU depends on Russia for a quarter of its natural gas, and 80 percent of that gas moves west through Ukrainian pipelines, that was no laughing matter.It's the former Soviet satellites that are most dependent on Gazprom's gas, because that's the way the pipelines ran in Soviet times.

Some of them will run out very fast if their fellow EU members in western Europe do not share gas from their own strategic reserves. And Turkey (not an EU member) has turned to Iran to replace the missing Russian gas.

Only it's not really Russian gas at all. Most of it comes from the Central Asian state of Turkmenistan. And the dispute between Russia and Ukraine is not a normal commercial dispute (as both sides insist), nor is it some kind of Russian strategic move (as the believers in a new Cold War maintain). It is a thieves' quarrel.

Since it is Turkmenistan's gas, you would expect the Turkmens to sell it to European countries directly, and pay transit fees to Russia and Ukraine for shipping it west through their pipelines.

Instead, Gazprom secured long-term rights to Turkmenistan's gas by agreeing to pay it a rumoured $340 per thousand cubic meters -- which is almost double the $179.50 that Ukraine actually paid in 2008.

Times are hard all over (Gazprom's shares have fallen by 76 percent since September) and Russia actually needs the money badly, so the pressure to raise the price of gas to subsidized ex-Soviet customers is higher than usual.

But that is not what caused the gas to be cut off to Ukraine on Jan. 1, and to everybody else in Europe a week later. The reason for that is probably a murky internal fight over the division of the spoils.

Gazprom is an opaque organization with many leading Russian political figures on its board and its management committee. But it is a model of transparency compared to RosUkrEnergo, yet another middleman with the job (which clearly does not need doing) of buying gas from Gazprom and selling it to Ukraine.

It was set up after the 2006 Russian-Ukrainian confrontation over gas.

Half of RosUkrEnergo is owned by Gazprom, and the other half by Ukrainian businessmen who steadfastly refuse to reveal their identities. The cutoff in gas shipments to Ukraine allegedly occurred because the Ukrainian government had paid an outstanding gas bill for $1.5 billion to RosUkrEnergo by the end of the year, but the money had not yet appeared in Gazprom's account -- and probably more importantly, because Ukraine was refusing to pay an additional $615 million in fines for late payment.

Now wait a minute. Maybe Ukraine was technically a month late in paying the bill (and maybe not), but whoever heard of a 40 percent fine for one month's late payment?

The glaring lack of detail about this "fine" reinforces the suspicion that the sum involved is really money creamed off the sale of Gazprom's sales to RosUkrEnergo and on to Ukraine that is now in dispute between the Russian and Ukrainian beneficiaries of a sweet little scam.

The thieves would certainly include high-ranking people in the Kremlin and in Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko's government.

So it's easy to see how the quarrel could escalate into an interstate confrontation, with Russia accusing Ukraine of stealing gas and Kiev accusing Moscow of turning off the taps for all of Europe.

And there's really not much that the European Union can do except to wait until the thieves have made a deal.

This episode will reinforce the EU's conviction that it is unwise to remain heavily dependent on gas that comes through Russia and Ukraine, not so much because they fear the return of Joseph Stalin as because they dislike dealing with a bunch of Al Capones.

However, the short-term options for alternative sources are limited.

In the longer term, the solution is to stop burning fossil fuels to provide Europe's energy, but that isn't going to happen for quite a while

Source: The Salt Lake Tribune

[OlgaH]

Only it's not really Russian gas at all. Most of it comes from the Central Asian state of Turkmenistan.

Salt Lake City with his "news" looks like fallen from a tree. It never was  a secret that Russia buys Central Asian Gas and sell it to Ukraine mixing with Russian gas and in 2009 Gazprom is going to buy 50 billion cu m. How much is 50 billion cu m? For example in 2006 Gazprom delivered 161,5 billion cu m of gas to Europe, on domestic Russian market Gazprom sold 316,3 billion cu m of gas and plus countries of FSU - 76,6 billion cu m including Ukraine - 37,6 billion cu m, and plus some other countries.

11.03.08 17:47

The gas companies of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan will sell natural gas at European prices beginning 2009.

This was stated by the chairman of Turkmengas state corporation Yagshigeldy Kakayev, president of KazMunaiGaz national company Uzakbay Karabalin and board chairman of Uzbekneftegaz national holding company Nurmmukhamad Akhmedov at a meeting with Gazprom board chairman Aleksey Miller in Moscow on March 11, Gasproms press service reports. It is reported that that Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have decided on the move "based on national economic interests and taking into account their international obligations to provide reliable and stable energy supplies."

Heads of the gas companies of Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan also discussed prospects for cooperation in the gas sphere during the talks.
http://www.turkmenistan.ru/?page_id=3&lang_id=en&elem_id=12359&type=event&sort=date_desc

If Ukraine wants to buy the gas directly from Turkmenistan they have all their rights to sign a contract ... why not? 

[Misha]

In the longer term, the solution is to stop burning fossil fuels to provide Europe's energy, but that isn't going to happen for quite a while

Natural gas is not the only fossil fuel. Another option is to shift to the burning of coal. It is not quite as clean environmentally, but it can be obtained from other sources than GAZPROM. Then, there is the nuclear option. More nuclear power plants would provide greater energy independence from Russia. Countries such as Australia and Canada could supply the uranium, countries that are actually reliable and respect contracts signed.

[Blues Fairy]

Russia and Ukraine were very friendly here in Brussels.  They acted like they have a deal but want something from EU.  Maybe they both are trying to drive up market price.

Interesting observation!
Maybe the whole brawl erupted for this very purpose.    Quite credible isn't it?

[Shadow]

There seems to be a deal in the making.

Russia and Europe have agreed on conditions regarding transit of gas, and the Czech Prime-Minister is on his way to Ukraine to get their signature.

Some funny sidelines.

Putin made a remark about the negotiations in Ukraine shoud go further as 'sitting in luxury hotels eating salo and drinking', then explained that the salo in Ukraine was extremely good. Classical Putin language for 'get off your asses and try to solve this thing', and quite offensive toward the Ukrainian negotiators.

A telegram was sent to the Russian TV network that this was a plot of Russia to make president Yuchenko look bad and promote the 'Russian spy' Timochenko.

[Diplomacy]

I am happy I found Salo today.  Just a little ticked, should have said it salah.  The lady was very nice and was not expecting to be knowing Russian.  Very helpful in Nuances of pronunciation, and shocked how short of a time I had been studying.

Of course when you are spending money at a place, I doubt they would say you are a stupid American lol.  It was $9.99 and I asked if this was the "American" rate?  The Euro Deli on legacy and Coit is very good for any of you closer to that location.

Babushka's love me.  They were cheering me on and helping with pronunciation.  Might of been the days entertainment too.

[Diplomacy]

I think there is something going on with both sides now also. 

[kievstar]

One day I think one way and the next the other.  Like a soap opera. 

[mrs.Shadow]

1. The problems with Gas between Ukraine and Russia are every December of every Year... Ukraine had a lot of time since October, when Putin and Timoshenko met each other right about the Gas deal... Still Ukraine was doing its "best" to drop the problem to the December as usual. And sent to Russia the delegation from Naftogas, whose representatives even had no rights to sign any contracts.

2. "Russia is doing nothing and wants affect on Europe" is incorrect softly speaking... Russians were till the end working on the problem Ukraine managed again and were still ready for negotiations... From Ukrainian side mr.Ushenko "had New Year holidays" and mrs. Timoshenko "was ill"...

3. "Ukraine wants less prices for Gas"... And what? I want everything be less in price.. Do I have rights to steal furniture, houses, cars from the product factories? However, the question about rising the prices to the European standards came only after actions Ukraine did. Like: stealing gas, which was directed for European countries. Shutting down the transit. After Ukraine shut down transit pipes, Russia still was delivering gas. But stopped this as well soon. The decision Ukraine did about shutting down the transit was made by Ukrainian Courts. Which was not working at all the day the document on shutting down was signed. Nobody knows even the judges who did it and when the case even was, as this day Courts were not working.

4. "Russia makes fake reports about amount of gas going out from Russian board". Oh, you know good it is like that? All amount is fixed and reported. Amount from Ukraine area is fixed and reported by stations of European countries. Russia announced that one of the new points of the new contract - European independent spectators. The one who is not agree with this - Ukraine. I wonder why?

5. What is the reason Ukraine behaves like that? Putting 17 countries in a gas crysis? To get money from Europe for Russia? Lol...
The first reason - Ukraine hoped that America will support them with money. If not USA then Europe. Money were not arrived. All have their own problems with financial crysis. What stays? To blackmail (force to pay).
The second reason - Ushenko loses his positions and hardly will be selected as President again. The one thing he hopes - to rise national mood by fighting with the "big bear". How? The new scandal.