*Everybody raids everybody else in Ukraine while Putin shuts off the gas
to Europe.
*Sooner or later these reckless shenanigans ought to send fossil-fuel prices through
the roof again (if you can get the fuel at all).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/05/putin-gas-ukraine
(...)
Putin's threat follows a raid yesterday by armed secret service agents on the Kiev headquarters of Naftogaz.
The raid is part of a bitter power struggle between Ukraine's president, Viktor Yushchenko, and the country's prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko. (((Proof positive that heroic street-level revolutionary dissidents can become their own worst enemies. I know that Putin is doing his best to destabilize the Ukraine, but gosh, he didn't need this eager help from the poison survivor and that knot-headed Gas Princess.)))
(((I know this sounds remote to some readers, but I know people in Belgrade who freeze when this stuff happens.))) Yushchenko, who controls Ukraine's SBU security service, ordered the raid in an apparent attempt to seize the contract signed by Tymoshenko and Putin, which ended January's gas war.
The deal with Gazprom led to the resumption of transit gas supplies to Europe after Ukraine agreed to pay a price for its own gas approaching market levels.
Yushchenko is now trying to sabotage the deal in an attempt to undermine Tymoshenko, his former ally turned bitter adversary, analysts suggest.
The Putin-Tymoshenko deal eliminated the shadowy intermediary company RosUkrEnergo – whose owners have allegedly agreed to back Yushchenko's attempts to win re-election in next year's presidential election, they add.
Tymoshenko has furiously accused Yushchenko of corruption. Yesterday she criticised the raid on Naftogaz and said that the security forces loyal to the president were "out of control".
"The SBU is blatantly breaking the law and the president is covering up for them," she said, adding that the raid violated the constitution.
This morning a group of unarmed men turned up at the offices of Ukrtransgaz, the company that runs Ukraine's pipelines.
According to Naftogaz, the group left the company's premises an hour later after a standoff with members of parliament who had rushed to the scene. An SBU spokeswoman, Maryna Ostapenko, said its officers were conducting a criminal investigation into "abuses in the gas sector". (...)
