Janet Haven

Poor Ukraine. As the country that bore the brunt of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, Ukraine is still paying for it, both in the health of its citizens and in the resulting cleanup. According to chernobyl.com, an information website set up by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and UNDP (United Nations Development Program) to track the effects of the disaster, the Ukrainan government still spends 5-7% of the national budget dealing with the consequences. And now they're struggling with their Russian gas bill in the middle of winter, while their bad-tempered neighbor to the south tries to decide how nasty to be.

There are, however, a couple of somewhat cheering bits of fallout in the Gazprom mess. One is simply the fact that Russia has gotten so cranky with Ukraine: Putin could not more clearly highlight Ukraine's moves towards an open, democratic political system, and away from Russian patronage and control. Quite simply, Ukraine isn't Russia's obedient poodle any longer -- Russia only props up subservient gangsters like Belarus' creep-in-chief, Alexander Lukashenko, who pays 48 dollars per 1000 cubic meters of Russian gas. Romania, Hungary, and other countries formerly under Soviet influence have long since moved on to paying market price (220-230 USD/1000 cubic meters) for their gas coming from Mother Russia.

Another cheering thought for Ukraine is their coming debutante ball as a real energy market. Whatever happens in this specific showdown, Ukraine will eventually have to pay market price for gas like other European democracies. What this means is that Ukraine, a country with severe winters and 50 million people, will become a true open market in time. Russia may now have Ukraine in a corner, but a few years down the road, that won't be the case -- other producers of natural gas, particularly in the Middle East, will be in a position to offer competitive rates to the country.

A final thought, which is more puzzling that cheering, is that of Russia's hubris. It's not crazy of Russia to ask that Ukraine, no longer under the Russian thumb, pay what other countries do. As noted above, it's a compliment of sorts. Given, Ukraine is a poorer country than Hungary or Romania, but one of the steps towards Europe is to get itself off of the Russian subsidy. However, it's quite strange that Russia, trying so actively to position itself as a stable world leader in energy, would do something so unsettling to their major customer (Europe, that is) that EU countries responded unilaterally by telling Russia to get its act together and stop throwing a tantrum. Russia, as of tonight, has been backed into the face-losing act of both turning the gas back on (for the EU) and of whining that Ukraine is stealing gas going through the pipeline to Europe (which is probably true, to some extent, but isn't really the point). The question is, what did Russia think was going to happen by threatening western Europe's energy supply? It seems, from the country's reaction, that they either didn't really consider the consequences, or that they believed that Ukraine would cave quickly to their pressure, making this a non-issue in Europe. And if they were wrong about that...