It seems to me that your thinking is generally slanted toward economic imperatives at the expense of political ones. Moreover, your argument in this post -- essentially that the gas dispute is a rather secretive financial affair among various Slavic bully boys, is in my opinion a bit off the mark.
In this case, the POV of Kremlin insiders would seem to take precedence -- such as Andrei Illarionov, Putin's hand-picked top economic adviser. Excerpts from an AP report via Forbes:
The company has said the price hike marks a long-overdue transfer to free-market price mechanisms.
However, Andrei Illarionov, a former economic adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, said the increase instead was a political move signaling the rise of neo-imperialist trends in Kremlin policy.
Illarionov said the Kremlin had asked him to help cast the price hike as a free-market measure, but that he resigned this week because the move "had no relation not only to liberal economic policy, but to economic policy at all." ...
Illarionov said that in August 2004, Gazprom signed a deal with Ukraine's gas company that envisaged five years of gas supplies at $50 per 1,000 cubic meters - part of the Kremlin's efforts to support presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych, who lost a tense race last fall to the Western-leaning Yushchenko.
"When the political situation changed, they remembered about subsidies," said Illarionov, who long had been a dissenter in the Kremlin, which is dominated by Putin's fellow veterans of the Soviet spy agency KGB.
Illarionov likened Russia's price hike for Ukraine to Nazi and Soviet ultimatums issued to Eastern European nations before their annexation on the eve of the World War II, and urged the Kremlin to step away "from the brink of a precipice that we are approaching so blindly and quickly."
Illiarnov's opinions are hardly singular. Ukrainian media, as well as braver Russian media, broadly see the gas-price attack for what it is: bullying and blackmail, Kremlin-style. (See also Ukrayinska Pravda, one of Ukraine's widest read and most influential publications.) Putin intends to punish Ukraine for deviating to the West. There is hardly more to it than that. The usual suspects rake in their cash along the way.
Yes, certain shady characters along the revenue stream are benefiting hugely, but that's nothing new. This new development is mainly about politics of control via energy supplies, the same game the US is playing.
Putin is playing brinksmanship, insisting on the collapse of Ukraine's new democracy back into Russia's orbit and brutal control. Ukrainians for the most part want OUT and to have a chance for freedom and prosperity -- the central messages of the Orange Revolution. Further, he's warning Europe that Ukraine needs to fall in order for Europe to retain Russian energy supplies.
Bear in mind that Putin is not the sharpest knife in the kitchen, and his new attack against Ukraine and indirectly against Europe may very well prove to be far too ill-conceived and too blunt (stupid, in other words) to be credible as more than another fist or boot in Ukraine's face. It's an old Russian habit towards Ukraine and Ukrainians. Russia's economy would implode without energy exports, and Putin is just dumb enough to try cutting those off if he doesn't get what he wants, that being in this case the return of Ukraine to Kremlin subservience.
(Opining from eastern Urkaine.)
----- ----- The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter. W. Churchill
At least we agree that Jerome does not understand the situation.
We, obviously, do not agree about Ukraine's motives. "freedom and prosperity -- the central messages of the Orange Revolution"? For whom? As long as you are from western Ukraine and not the Russian-speaking eastern part where all of the industry is located. The U.S. State Dept. spent $65 million financing this "revolution".
Meanwhile, we have Ukraine creating monuments to Nazi soldiers. They have this in common with the baltic states You would think that Germany, at least, would speak up against such behavior. But they are too busy voting for baltic states in EU and NATO. Europe has learned nothing. Russia must always save her, as when she stopped the mongolians from taking over Europe. All while Europeans look down their nose at Russia and Ukrainians help the enemy.
I'm not saying that Jerome doesn't understand the situation. Not at all. His economic viewpoint, engendered by his scholarly economic emphasis, leaves a small but not insignificant blind spot regarding the political arena. Jerome's take on the issues at hand are quite plausible, insofar as they go. I argue only that his tendency to interpret things in terms of economics is in this case at the expense of interpreting them polically -- economics and political science both being worthwhile and respectable social sciences. (I'm a behavioral scientist myself, a slightly distinct breed of social scientist....)
Anticipating that you'd likely be among the first to respond, I'm relieved that you attributed only $65 million to the US side (or was it just US State, with other US players to be mentioned later?) Common wisdom and estimates in Ukraine, and in the West, were that Russia had invested around half a billion dollars in pumping Yanukovich into office over Yushchenko. Eight times more, and it still didn't work.
Your last paragraph lost me. Europe et al. may or may not look down their noses at Russia, but notions such that Russia must save Europe somehow is quite out of sync with what the overwhelming majority of Europeans think -- unless I've missed something. If so, I stand to be corrected.
If we start going down the this and that and me and you path, then we'll end up arguing that Charles-Martel saved Russia, but not really because anyhow the King of Russia near then was half-German, or maybe part-Italian, and anyways we owe it all to Kenya since we're all Africans.
You have to stop orienting your thoughts along those lines, skitalets. Imagine if Bush opponents in the USA (half the country) had no chance of being recognized as existing, just because all of the USA could be swept as being "a bunch of Bush-electing fanatics". Wouldn't that be a little sad?
If you're pissed off with Jérôme, let it remain because you disagree with his geo-political arguments in the energy sector, not because you don't like what you think he may have said to your neighbour about your sister who happened to save the life of a Portuguese sailor in the 16th century.
And I know what I'm talking about, I've been cured from overreacting to attacks on my country ever since I visited fuckfrance.com. Now, I know how to differenciate between people and government, and I leave the past in the past. I suggest you try to do the same, it will only make you feel better anyways ... countries are just administrative bits of paper ... it's cultures that are interesting, not countries. And the Russian culture is fascinating to me. To the point where I started taking Russian lessons, I read a lot of classics, watched movies such as "Another day in the life of Oblomov" ... all this having nothing to do with Putin or the Mongols.
Russia saved Russia from Mongol invasions, and with limited success (my dear Russian girlfriend/econ professor from Siberia has very distinctive, though lovely, Mongol features for one example.)
Russia saved Russia from Nazi Germany.
If Europe or anyplace else benefited in either case, it was an accident. Russia never set out to do anything more than protect Russia.
Moreover, by the time Stalin finished (died) and less psychotic minds took over the former USSR, the whole notion of "protection" coming out of Russia sent Sicilian mafia chills down the spine of a West trying to resist Nazi/Communist control. Which was worse, Nazis or Stalinist-bred Communists, is debatable primarily on the basis of video recordings and known mass graves. Be sure to consider the Ukrainian Holodomor, where Stalin intentionally starved to death seven million Ukrainians who dared resist his collective farming enterprise. Or was is six million, as in the Jewish Holocaust at the hands of Nazis? Or was it eight million?
Russia has never, ever intentionally saved Europe or anyone else. Russia has a hard time saving her own people, and as you surely know very well Russia has a long and inglorious history of destroying her own people.
If by any chance Europe is looking down its nose at Russia, I respectfully suggest that it may very well be due to some Russians audacious and self-serving claims that Russians have ever even pretended to care about anyone other than Russians -- and not doing a very good job in that latter case.
Now we have the tupical post KGB insuniations and provocations on the topic!
Yes! Petlura and Bandera are bustards. But they are Ukrainien (ours) bustartds. And only ukranian people could change their attitude for them! Per aspera ad astra
How the people in the know "package" their decision to the public, and how they bring politicians on board, is another topic... In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
