Posted on 01/12/2009 2:31:25 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
BELGRADE, Serbia: Aleksa Branisavljevic's apartment is freezing, but his anger toward Russia burns hot.
His every breath a visible plume, the elderly Belgrade resident railed against Moscow on Monday for a standoff with Ukraine that has shut off natural gas supplies to millions of eastern Europeans while those to the west have plenty of heat.
"Russians always gave us nothing but misery. They should never be trusted, as this gas blackmail of Europe shows," Branisavljevic said.
Mingled with the misery is a sense of betrayal in nations such as Serbia and Bulgaria — countries with traditional religious and cultural ties to Russia, but a complicated love-hate relationship with the Kremlin.
Just last month, Serbia sold NIS, its state oil monopoly, to Russian gas giant Gazprom at a discount. Serbian officials were convinced the payoff would be steady supplies. But nearly a week ago, Gazprom halted gas delivery via Ukraine amid a price dispute.
Ordinary Serbs — outraged as temperatures plummeted inside their homes at the height of winter — burned a Russian flag in protest, and the Serbian government sought emergency supplies from Hungary and Germany. ....
So much for any lingering belief in the notion that Slavs inherently look out for one another, said Peter Weiss, a former chairman of the now-disbanded Slovak Communist Party.
"The Serbs and Bulgarians are literally freezing, and the Slovaks fear the same," Weiss wrote in Monday's editions of the left-wing Czech daily Pravo.
"Russian politicians like to call themselves brothers ... but the way the business-political dispute of the two largest Slav states goes, it's another tough blow to the myth."
(Excerpt) Read more at iht.com ...
ping
For the last 1000 years or so, Russians have taken care of Russians, barely, but always at the expense of every country and ethnic group around them. I think it’s been long enough to call that a trend.
You do have a point.
Russians being Russians. All of Eastern Europe feels the same way.
The Russians always feel thatthey are not properly respected and this is always the way they try to gain respect.
Once again the "Sick Man of Europe".
Bulgaria, a Russian ally, is left cold and angry
Excerpts
SOFIA: Maria Pavlova, 70, a retired nurse and widow, has been shivering in her cramped apartment for a good part of the past week, standing over the small electric oven in her kitchen to warm her arthritic bones.
With a monthly pension equivalent to about $74, she cannot afford an electric heater. She despairs at the prospect of facing another cold shower.
"This is a war without weapons in which Russia has used its control of energy supply to flex its muscles in front of the world," she said, pointing to an indoor thermometer showing a temperature of 6 degrees Celsius (43 Fahrenheit). "I am cold and angry. We have always been dependent on Russia, and this crisis shows that the situation hasn't changed. Instead of bombs or missiles, they want us to freeze to death."
People across this poor, snow-covered Balkan country accused Russia of instigating a new Cold War in which depriving millions of Europeans of heat and hot water had become the latest political weapon against the West.
He forgot to blame the evil Bushitler for the global warming climate change they're encountering today.
For a while now I have said that with in a few years we will have a lot of cold or freezing people right here in the United States.
The tyrants in Russia, whether crowned or party apparatchiks have never hesistated enslaving and murdering fellow Russians as well, though.
Hence the modifier “barely”.
My heart breaks for the people suffering over there. It’s something of note that the AP even noticed them. It seems that the world finds it easy to ignore the largely white populations in eastern Europe. It is particularly sad to contemplate the tragic results on orphans and widows. And these countries have so many street children and elderly.
The good news is that, as the price of oil plummets, those Third World Savages who live just east of Poland will be selling their daughters to creepy old men yet again.
Russia has never been able to take care of Russia. The population has been in servitude to the wealthy and that has not changed.
What has changed is who the wealthy are.
I’m starting to think we could have another big Depression.
0 preaches “Hope”. Hope requires confidence. No confidence around that I can see unless it’s by the skulls full of mush who voted for this guy.
I hope this back fires on Putin.
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