Business

Will Ukraine Be Put Aside?
by Jana Passova

Moscow brought bad news for Ukraine on Thursday. Gazprom- Russian gas monopoly- seems to cut off Ukraine's supplies. Ukraine owes about 1.5 billion dollars for its gas to Gazprom. If Kiev doesn’t solve the problems with mortgage, Monday could be the first day without a gas. Better news came for the other states of Eastern Europe as Slovakia for example. They shouldn't be affected. This message is important because Ukraine is a major transit route to the states of the European Union. A similar situation took place in the beginning of 2006, when supplies to European customers were disrupted. This time the situation is not as risky. It affects the Russian natural gas only. The other Ukrainian supplies from Central Asian countries shouldn't be touched. The Russian gas compensates only a deficit of supplies from Central Asia. This announcement came before a trip of Ukrainian President to Moscow. Ukrainian and Russian relationships are strained these days. That kind of situation was caused by an interest of Ukraine to become a part of NATO and the European Union. In 2006 Russia was planning a new giant pipeline that would be taken under the Baltic Sea directly to Germany. Polish Prime Minister came up with a new idea, that pipeline could be running through their country. This idea was commented as a very difficult and more expensive than the Nord Stream pipeline. Some politicians tuned over the political interests of Russia to control a part of European's gas market by solving of this problem.

by Jana Passova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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posted by Blog TechSource @ 2:29 PM