Gas Brinkmanship
6/1/2009Interview with Radio Free Europe, quoted in an article written by Brian Whitmore:
The EU weathered a similar dispute between Russia and Ukraine in 2006, and another threatened cutoff last year. But Federico Bordonaro, a Rome-based analyst with the “Power and Interests News Report,” says that this time Moscow and Kyiv have crossed a line.
“They are [both] certainly discrediting themselves,” Bordonaro said. “We can quote Karl Marx here and say that when history repeats itself, it ends up being a farce. It is hard to believe that almost every New Year’s since 2006, Europe is faced with the possibility of a severe cutoff in gas supplies because Russia and Ukraine aren’t able to find a market agreement.”
A quarter of Europe’s natural-gas supplies come from Russia, and 80 percent of them are pumped through a network of Soviet-era pipelines in Ukraine. The same network also supplies Ukraine’s domestic customers.
[…] Analysts say European officials understand that Russia is using its energy wealth to pressure Ukraine politically, but they also fault Ukraine for allowing itself to become vulnerable to such pressure.The gas dispute is all the more fractious because it exploits existing rifts within the EU itself. EU stalwarts like Germany, France and Italy are more eager to maintain good relations with Russia. By contrast, former communist states like Poland, the Czech Republic, and the Baltic countries are historically more sympathetic to Ukraine.
