Russia Ratchets Up Ukraine’s Gas Bills in Shift to an Economic Battlefield

The New York Times ^ | MAY 10, 2014 | STEVEN ERLANGER

[WhiskeyX]

What Gazprom executives now say Ukraine owes them comes to more than $22 billion. In early March, Gazprom put the bill at less than $2 billion. How Gazprom now calculates its charges explains a lot about the way the company is used by the Kremlin for political purposes.

[samtheman]

nder a 2010 accord between Mr. Yanukovych and Moscow, Ukraine received a 30 percent discount on gas in return for extending Russia’s lease on its base in Crimea for the Black Sea fleet. But after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Moscow abrogated the accord, canceling the reduction and bringing the price Ukraine now pays Gazprom to $485 per unit. Gazprom added that it intended to apply this price retroactively to 2010 when the deal was struck.

That's a good one.

So the Ukraine has to pay for the privilege of having its territory seized.

I guess that's typical: to the winner go the spoils.

Or alternatively: the Golden Rule. He who has the Gold (gas) makes the rules.

[smaug6]

Ukraine is a heavy producer of fertilizer on the world market. There is much speculation that they steal from the Russians via the pipelines traveling across their lands. I wonder if this is Russia’s way of trying to recoup losses.

[Erik Latranyi]

Meanwhile, if the US just announced we would export LNG and related products, world prices would collapse, putting the Russian economy into an immediate recession.

But such an action would require leadership, courage and brains.....something totally lacking in the Obama Administration.

[WhiskeyX]

“Ukraine is a heavy producer of fertilizer on the world market. There is much speculation that they steal from the Russians via the pipelines traveling across their lands. I wonder if this is Russia’s way of trying to recoup losses.”

The speculation is disinformation used as false propaganda coming from the Russians. See how Putin’s oligarch friends in Russia and the Ukraine looted the Ukraine to enrich their Swiss bank accounts and misdirect the blame upon the uninvolved Ukrainians:

http://www.ocnus.net/artman2/publish/Editorial_10/The_Misperception_of_the_Russian-Ukrainian_Gas_Problem.shtml

[WhiskeyX]

“But such an action would require leadership, courage and brains.....something totally lacking in the Obama Administration.”

You omitted the bribes to the Obama Administration required to look the other way when they propagandize the Climate Change mantra.

[mac_truck]

The Ukraine is a corrupt deadbeat nation, and has been since it’s referendum to secede from the Soviet Union.

[WhiskeyX]

“The Ukraine is a corrupt deadbeat nation, and has been since it’s referendum to secede from the Soviet Union.

It was impossible for any Ukrainian to to participate in the money laundering of the natural gas revenues without Putin, Medvedev, and the other Russian oligarchs setting up and maintaining the covert scheme. This is also why Yeltsin, Putin, and the Russian organized crime groups helped to put ethnic Russians in the Ukraine like Yanukovych in control of the Ukraine and established the Ukraine's natural gas industry as a monopoly under their criminal organization's control. The ordinary people of the Ukraine had little or no control over what Putin and his Ukrainian accomplices were doing to the Ukrainian industry. So, when you criticize the Ukrainian natural gas industry, you are in effect criticizing the Russian control of the Ukrainian natural gas industry.

Now that the Ukrainians are putting a stop to the Russian criminal looting of the Ukrainian natural gas industry, Putin wants to invade the Ukraine and simply steal it from the Ukrainian people.