The problem, boys, is that for the folks in Europe, they don’t really care whose fault it is. All they know is that for about four years, Russia and Ukraine haven’t been able to get it together to sign a long-term agreement. And that regardless of who is to blame, they didn’t get their gas because Russia didn’t send it. Russia looks bad. And if this was in part a ploy—or in part used as a ploy—to crank up the work on Nord Stream that would be a Russian-controlled pipeline, the ploy backfired. Because the shivering babushki in Sofia and Belgrad—those Slavic, Orthodox friends of Russia—think “you can’t trust them Russians.”

I’m sorry the links were of no use to you. I only posted them because I saw the note in the body of the post about providing links.

FWIW, the author used to work for Gazprom and has written extensively on the perennial Russia-Ukraine gas spats (incl. his PhD). I agree that it is a lot of speculation regarding the current events, but at least it is well-informed, nuanced speculation. The history, though, is not speculation but observation.

The middleman company you are speaking about (RosUkrEnergo) is owned by Gazprom (50%) and two individuals from the ukrainian side – Firtash (45%) and Fursin, it doesn’t owned by Naftogaz.

What about gas prices offered by Russia to Ukraine, it was $250 first and even less before if there would be no delay with payments and agreements, but Ukraine didn’t pay it’s debts in time and created this awful situation, so discounts are not available anymore.

> No one understands why Russia turned off the gas yet again.

We in Ukraine understand it good enough. The gas (a big amount first) just didn’t go through Ukraine. There are independet observers invited by Gazprom who fixed it.
Many ukrainians suppot Russia in this conflict. It’s a pity that Russia didn’t get an agreement from Ukraine to allow observers to look at Nafogas documents according to the signed protocol. We here in Ukraine also would be interested to look where the money go to if Naftogaz buys gas from Russia for 179 and sells it here in Ukraine for 320 and became a bankrupt with it.

There is also an interesting story about Naftogaz (in russian and ukrainian)
http://www.2000.net.ua/print?a=%2Fa%2F61152
in short : Ukrainian Naftogaz is about to default and at the same time it owes a lot money to Gazprom (and Gazprom owned bank? according to another source), but ukrainian govertment wants to take all actives from Naftogaz (including infrastructure etc), make it bankrupt and leave Gazprom with nothing. Also they will organize another company instead of Naftogaz using Naftogaz actives and will have Gazprom to deal with another company with no old contracts etc. Actually this is a deception and raidering. That’s why Russia is so angry and wants to get money as soon as possible. At least this is my understanding of the situation.

BTW, Timoshenko signed a protocol with her own additions after it was signed in Moscow. So there is no valid protocol again.

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_OFFPUB/KS-QA-08-047/EN/KS-QA-08-047-EN.PDF

In natural gas 1 Gj=26.8 cubic meters, and 1 Euro=1.37 USD, so for example, we get that Euro Area industry pays about 10 Euro per GJ = 10*(1000/26.8)*1.37 = 510$/100 cubic meters… take away local taxes and surcharges and you’ll get about 450$.

http://www.cbs.nl/en-GB/menu/themas/industrie-energie/publicaties/artikelen/archief/2007/2007-2187-wm.htm

As far as I can tell, none of these things you mention are untrue – which means the media reports what it’s supposed to report – the news… ;-) It’s not Russia’s fault Ukraine produces mostly “bad news”, is it?

I’ve never seen any credible reports of discrimination against Russian speakers in Ukraine – half of the population of Ukraine are fluent Russian speakers. There are documented cases of discrimination against non-Russian speakers in Ukraine, almost all of which occur in Crimea (since the autonomous government there is strongly against non-Russian language education and civic life) and the far eastern provinces.

Yeah, Ukraine could probably cut a good deal if it would sell Russia its pipeline. But not everyone thinks that Russia having a total monopoly over gas transit is a good idea.

Mossy said, In the past, when Gazprom was raking it in, they could wait forever to get paid. Today, when they are supposedly hugely in debt (though absolutely no one can explain to me why they are in debt), they really do need the money.

Gazprom is a funny company. For a while they sold almost all of their export gas to a funny company no one had ever heard of named Itera. Itera became one of the biggest gas companies in the world from nothing, and while owning nothing. All very mysterious, especially since Gazprom sold its gas to Itera for very low rates and then Itera sold them for normal rates. Of course this hurt Gazprom’s finances. It turned out that Itera was owned mostly by the family of the former CEO of Gazprom. This guy, who was a Yeltsin crony, was replaced by a Putin crony, Alexi Miller, who is now still a top guy (maybe the top- it’s hard to keep up) at Gazprom. So, shady business deals designed primarily to ship Gazprom (and so Russian state) money into the hands of politicians and away from everyone else are standard parts of any Gazprom operation. It’s not a normal business, or even a normal state-run business, but a personal money-making operation for connected Russians (and Germans, in the case of the despicable Gerhard Schroder.)

I find the links to European Tribune to be not illuminating in the least – it’s all pure speculation any numbers or facts behind it. It’s nice to build theories, but without facts they have nothing to do with reality. Sorry.

Ukraine wants to pay about half of what most European countries are paying for gas. Which is “interesting”. :) The prices for gas will not fall that far – gas is a much more necessary product than oil – without gas a lost of countries will not hold out for more than a few days! Which I find amazing – talk about dependency!

Belorus pays a much lower price for gas for a very simple reason. Not because they are “friends”, but because they sold their gas transit pipeline system to Gasprom and got discounts. This is something Ukraine adamantly refuses to do…

***Ukraine is on Russia’s bad list, which means that there is a constant media barrage of Bad Things About Ukraine: documentaries about how Ukraine provided arms to the Georgians; reports on how the Ukrainian Orthodox Church wants to break away from the Moscow Patriarchy and put the souls of its flock in jeopardy; reports on political mess of the “orange revolution”; reports on discrimination against Russian speakers; reports on the mass rallies against NATO – the list goes on and on. ***

As far as I can tell, none of these things you mention are untrue – which means the media reports what it’s supposed to report – the news… ;-) It’s not Russia’s fault Ukraine produces mostly “bad news”, is it?