Rosyjsko-ukraińska wojna gazowa, tło polityczne

Jest to - wydaje mi się - ciekawe podsumowanie tytułowego konfliktu. Autor dostrzega wydarzenia w kilku kontekstach, także "rury bałtyckiej". Zapraszam do lektury. Source: (BBC) Update: internationalization of the conflict, US gets involved: "According to Austrian Der Standard, Russia's motives might have to do with taking over the Ukrainian Naftogaz and thus the transit pipeline system after bringing the Ukrainian govt. to its knees with damage suits. Ukrainian politicians, even Timoshenko, cry foul. On the other hand, Russian Iswestija just made a memorandum of understanding between SecState Condoleeza Rice and her Ukrainian counterpart, Wladimir Orgysko from December public, in which US companies are held out the prospect to modernize the Ukrainian pipeline system in exchange for shares in Naftogaz." For more than a week now no natural gas is flowing from Russia west via Ukraine. In several eastern European countries, who obtain up to 90 percent of their gas supply from Russian energy giant Gazprom, strategic reserves have reached rock bottom, and hundreds of thousands of consumers are forced to sit out the political row between Moscow and Kiev in increasingly freezing premises (see map). On Tuesday a deal brokered by the EU over the weekend failed; now Brussels is threatening both sides with legal action. But even if billions-of-Euros litigations will force Gazprom and Naftogaz Ukrainy, the company in charge of the transit pipelines, to eventually yield, the triangular conflict between Brussels, Moscow and Kiev will be far from solved. The dispute over gas prices and transit has shifted from a merely economic to a political level. With both sides playing with loaded chips and digging their heels in - and Europe being caught between two stools - this conflict threatens to have wide-spread impacts and to escalate to an ultimate showdown between strongmen in the Kremlin and the hopelessly divided leadership in Kiev. What is at stake is not only Europe's energy supply, but also the EU's relations with Russia and Ukraine, and the political survival of the Ukrainian government. Ever since the Orange Revolution replaced the Moscow-backed heirs of Leonid Kuchma with the pro-Western but hapless Viktor Yushchenko, the Kremlin is using natural gas as a tool to discipline unruly Ukraine when leaning too closely towards NATO and as a leverage to grant or deny favors. The only two winters since 2005 in which no "gas war" between Moscow and Kiev occurred were when their darling, the eastern Ukraine-backed, Viktor Yanukovych was prime minister and thus successfully demonstrated that only a pro-Russian Ukraine is economically and politically viable. A lesson the Ukrainian people are made sure to learn the hard way every time anew they dare to raise their voices or fists. The bone of contention back in 2006, as it is this time, was that Ukraine still receives Russian gas well below the world market price - as of December Europe pays $400 per 1,000m3 of gas and Ukraine about $200, while Russia's puppet regime in Belarus gives the begging of $125 and the Kremlin's good friends in Armenia only $110. No doubt, being buddy-buddy with Moscow had and still has its perks. These happy, almost free-ride days for Ukraine came to a sudden end with orange-clad demonstrators winning the presidency. While in 2006 international law was clearly favoring Ukraine - although binding treaties, still negotiated under Kuchma, guaranteed an artificially low price, Russia unilaterally cut supply off to punish and force Yushchenko to accept world market prices - this year's confrontation does not fit into a neat black and white, good vs. bad guy scheme. Ukraine knew perfectly well that the treaty guaranteeing them such favorable terms (a compromise of $250 agreed on in 2006) were running out this fall, and yet they neither paid their substantial debts of a about $2 billion nor made attempts to negotiate a new treaty - no surprise here as Russia demanded outrageous $450 per 1,000m3. Kiev's calculation was then quite simple: about 70 percent of the EU's gas is supplied by Russia, of which the majority is pumped west via Ukraine. If Kiev were to provoke a showdown with Gazprom, they could count on European media passing the buck to Russia. As Fyodor Lukyanov, the not necessarily impartial Russian editor of Global Affairs, puts it: Ukraine - desperate not to pay more for its gas because of the fragile state of its economy - seized the initiative from Moscow by endangering exports to Europe. They are calculating, and I think not without basis, that the longer this drags on the more the blame will be laid at Moscow's door. Gazprom, under pressure from a Europe angry its supplies are being disrupted and fearful for its reputation as an energy supplier, will now be forced to cut the price it is demanding Ukraine to pay for its gas." Hands down, with eastern EU member states facing one of the coldest winters in living memory (-28ºC in Saxony in the week after New Year) in unheated buildings, this cynical calculation seemed to fall in place when Gazprom cut off its entire gas supply to the West on January 7 after Ukrainian Naftogaz Ukrainy was caught red-handed tapping the transit pipelines. As a result, Gazprom will keep losing $120 million in revenues and much of its reputation as a secure supplier every single day this boycott is kept up. Another reading, however, attributes an inner-Ukrainian dimension to the escalation. According to the BBC, Moscow intends to weaken Viktor Yushchenko in the upcoming presidential elections against the more pro-Russian Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko (she kept tacitly quiet about Russian's invasion of Georgia during the summer, while Yushchenko denounced it in strong terms) by providing her with a stage to shine after negotiating a last minute deal and thus once again pose as the country's "Joan of Arc". As usual, her efforts were torpedoed by the Yushchenko camp. A different interpretation for the confrontation, the one dominating in Brussels, is that Russia intends to make a strong case for the Nord Stream Pipeline, running from Vyborg (near St. Petersburg) to Greifswald (north of Berlin) through the Baltic Sea and thus bypassing such insecure transit countries as Ukraine. This alternative is heavily favored in Germany - after all, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder sits on the board of Nord Stream, a consortium of Gazprom and German BASF and E.ON - as it is vigorously opposed in the Baltic states and Poland, who insist on participating through outlets. Traditional transit countries like the Ukraine, Slovakia, and Hungary also feel snubbed and fight it teeth and claws. Whatever behind the scenes machinations having provoked this year's "gas war", the lessons learned from it are obvious. Ukraine was unable to pay the special price among former comrades of $200 per 1,000m3 before. Now, ranking as one of the first and prime victims of the global financial crises it will be even less so, let alone pay world market prices. This gives Russia plenty of room to continue playing divide and conquer among its hopelessly quarrelling political class, favoring princelings one day and abandoning them the other as Moscow sees fit. As long as Ukraine remains a country at the crossroads between East and West with an every-man-or-woman-for-itself leadership - not for nothing Samuel Huntington predicted it to become one of the fault lines of his Clash of Civilizations - it will remain in turmoil and an easy prey for Russian intervention and manipulation. For the EU, its dependence on insecure suppliers like Russia and insecure transit countries like Ukraine once again became painfully aware. If hardly any lessons were learned from the 2006 gas dispute - except for countries like Germany establishing sizeable strategic gas reserves as they are common for oil - the latest "gas war" should finally ring the alarm bells in Brussels. For as long as Ukraine and the EU remain internally divided Russia will continue to wield energy as tool of state power. And get away with it with flying colors. Even the most diehard particularist or defender of the nation state and its prerogatives should finally appreciate that the world's biggest economy can no longer afford to be held hostage by ever ongoing Russo-Ukrainian feuds. Both a communitization of Europe's energy policies as well as putting secure energy supply on the top of Brussels' agenda is the order of the hour. Given the lengths and wars the United States is willing to go in order to secure its oil supply well into the twenty-first century, it is outright pathetic that the EU members states yet fail to face Russia like one in negotiations crucial for their survival and for their citizens' wellbeing. Instead they routinely have each nation going its own way and criminally disregarding the common interest. The lessons learned from this winter's supply squeeze ought to be that supply diversification is a security imperative. On a mid-term perspective this might result in the preference of alternative pipelines like Nord Stream or the Nabucco pipeline - directly connecting the EU to the gas fields of Iran and the Caspian Sea through an extension of the existing Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum pipeline - scheduled to be completed in 2011 and 2013 respectively. On a long-term perspective, however, it can only come down to energy autarky and independence, i.e. the replacement of carbon-based with alternative energies produced and raised at home. -- Hannes Artens is the author of The Writing on the Wall, the first anti-Iran-war novel. http://agonist.org/hannes_artens/20090114/the_russian_ukrainian_gas_war_a_political_backgrounder