The gas crisis has hit Russia's best friends in Europe the hardest
Before the New Year, Georgi Siromashki, a Bulgarian pensioner in the town of Ruse, Bulgaria, always laughed at his Sofia pal Khristo Lozev: Even he, Georgi, living in the provinces, had gas, while Lozev, although a resident of the capital, was still using wood and coal to keep his house warm. Now, it is Georgi who envies his friend. During the Russian-Ukrainian gas conflict he had to sleep in two sweaters and spend his entire pension on an expensive electric heater.
"My radiators were as cold as corpses, and even worse. And that with frosts of minus 20o. Our Russian brothers no longer love us as much as they used to," the pensioner comments ironically. Khristo disagrees: "Slav brothers have nothing to do with this. It is a spat between the Russian mafia and Ukrainian oligarchs; perhaps they cannot divide something." Georgi shrugs his shoulders and turns to the Newsweek correspondent: "When you are back, tell them they can quarrel as much as they like, only that we should not freeze."
The elderly Bulgarian has every moral right to voice his grievances against his Eastern neighbours - the conflict between Russia and Ukraine hit his country more than other consumers of Russian gas in Central and Eastern Europe. This is the conclusion formed by members of the EU Gas Coordination Group as they met for a special meeting to calculate the damage from the outage of gas supplies.
Bulgaria is 96% dependent on Russian gas. If the crisis had not ended last week, the country might have had to introduce a state of emergency. Now the Bulgarians are calculating their financial losses - 90 million euros according to preliminary estimates - and are re-thinking their attitude to their former Communist Bloc neighbours. Ukraine is criticised and berated, but without much enthusiasm, while Russia is getting a full blast - the Bulgarians have never before felt such anger towards Russia.
Only recently Bulgaria was considered the most pro-Russian country in the European Union. Before the gas crisis, 70% of Bulgarians more or less sympathised with Russia. The two weeks of freezing changed the picture radically. According to a new poll, only 32% of Bulgarians now love Russia, and 48% have negative feelings towards it. "The pro-Russian sentiments, shared for centuries by most of our people, have been unable to withstand the overcooling," says Ivan Krastev, head of the Sofia-based Centre for Liberal Studies.
NO LIGHT AND NO HEAT
Any mention of Russia in Bulgaria these days elicits a painful grimace from people of all ages and social groups. The only difference is that pro-European youths and businessmen are more vocal, while pensioners feel rather disappointed.
Both groups converged last Wednesday for a rally near the monument to the Liberator Tsar Alexander II opposite the Parliament. The aim was not only to express the resentment against the authorities that failed to diversify energy supplies and build gas storage sites. Protesters were demanding that the government exert more active efforts in dealing with the economic crisis, fighting corruption and crime, or wanton tree felling, and, in general, resign there and then. The first such rally took place on January 14 and ended with scuffles, so now police were checking bags carefully in case they contained piercing or cutting tools or flares.
Georgi Todorov and Zhoana Licheva, law school students, had passed through all cordons without trouble - in his backpack Georgi had only leaflets with Vladimir Putin's pictures. The pictures carry the inscription saying "Ne ni topli", which translated into English means "You do not keep us warm". The Russian Prime Minister has a nimbus around his head shaped like a gas burner. "Putin considers himself to be an oil and gas god, while our country depends too much on his whims. It is abnormal and dangerous," the student says, trying to make himself heard above the whistlings of the crowd and loud shouts of ‘Resign'. "Bulgaria lives in the 21st century, and Russia in the middle of the 20th. And as the gas conflict has shown, we are still hostages of the Big Brother, and our Government is to blame for this."
Loudspeakers mounted on an improvised stage suddenly blare forth with the Scorpions' song "Wind of Change". While Georgi sings along, Zhoana looks for a Putin leaflet in the rucksack. It emerges that the whole pack was given away and the girl offers us strips of paper to pin to our jackets, with the inscription "Bulgaria is ours, not yours".
NUCLEAR REACTION
No university classes had to be interrupted because of cold radiators as it was examination time and there were no lectures at the time. Most of the Bulgarian schools, however, closed their doors in the past two weeks. In Sofia alone, the gas shutoff caused 70 schools to be closed, including School №12. "On the first day, we just shortened the lessons, but later had to send the children home, when the temperature in the classrooms dropped to 10 degrees," said headmistress Vera Zakharyeva. "But the children were freezing at home as well, and many are still suffering from colds."
The principal invited us to make a tour of the school. The corridors smell of paint and canteen food, with drawings by students pasted on the walls, and New Year garlands festooning down from the windows. Classes resumed last Wednesday as soon as Russian gas began flowing through Bulgarian pipes again. The school is warm, but Ms Zakharyeva does not believe Ukraine and Russia have struck a lasting agreement.
Like most Bulgarians, Ms Zakharyeva has been giving a lot of thought recently to a possible re-launch of the Kozlodui Nuclear Power Plant, its advantages and disadvantages. The closure of its four generating units built in the 1970s and patterned on the Chernobyl model was one of the main conditions for Bulgaria's entry into the European Union. At the height of the gas crisis, Bulgaria's Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev said that Kozlodui might be re-activated. Plans to re-open old plants and build new ones are being mooted in Slovakia, Romania, Poland and Lithuania.
"For us, it would be an added security, because no one can guarantee that the crisis does not happen again," says Yordan Kostadinov, a member of Parliament and former director of the Kozlodui plant. He stopped believing in Russia's credibility as a fuel supplier on the fourth day of the crisis. "All of us thought the conflict would not last longer than two or three days. The Russians have never broken their word and we believed they would quickly sort things out with Ukraine," the politician says. "But it soon became clear that Russia doesn't have its former power. It cannot give its partners assurances that they will not find themselves on the brink of a disaster again."
Mr Kostadinov is confident that his nuclear plant meets all safety requirements and advocates its early re-launch: "If Brussels intervenes, let it compensate us for the losses from unused capacities," he says. Mr Kostadinov does not believe that Bulgarian consumers or companies will be able to recover anything from Russia or Ukraine through courts of law. Nevertheless he bids goodbye to Newsweek on an optimistic note: "Let there always be sunshine, let there always be gas."
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TSAR OF HEAT
"MR PUTIN CONSIDERS HIMSELF TO BE AN OIL AND GAS GOD, WHILE OUR COUNTRY DEPENDS TOO MUCH ON HIS WHIMS"
BUTTERCUPS WILT
The owner of the large Plantava flower conservatory, Valentin Petkov, does not intend to take Russia to court, although his losses are considerable. His greenhouses are heated by several gas-fired boilers, and with a gas shortage their temperature dropped to 7 degrees instead of the regulation 20 degrees. "It was a real catastrophe," Mr Petkov said. "As I watched the news, I thought: Russia and Ukraine were each trying to pull the blanket its way, but why should my flowers die because of that?"
Mr Petkov considers himself lucky - more than 150 of Bulgaria's major industrial plants stopped altogether when the gas ran out, while hundreds more operated in an emergency mode. Economy and Energy Minister Petar Dimitrov compared the aftermath of the gas conflict to a terrorist attack on the economy. "Bulgaria suddenly discovered that gas dependence on Russia was the Achilles heel of its economy. To many people it was a bombshell," says political analyst Ivan Krastev. Bulgarian business is now pro-active in supporting plans to build the Nabucco gas pipeline, bypassing Russia. The main lesson of the crisis, in Mr Krastev's view, is that Bulgaria can no longer pin its hopes on a "special" relationship with Russia and must join the efforts to work out a common EU gas strategy. This is what EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs has been urging for several years.
He has also been promoting plans to diversify gas supplies. Milcho Savov, who introduced himself as "a former member of the Communist Party", did not know until January 7 that Bulgaria was receiving all of its gas through one single pipeline. Now he can freely discuss the pluses and minuses of the South and Nord Streams, the Nabucco project, and the Trans-Sakharan Pipeline - nothing else was reported or discussed on television these past days. "We all sat around heaters in our homes, watching TV, and waiting for the good news," Mr Savov says, rubbing his cold hands in a habitual gesture. "The worst time was at night, when I had to sleep in my jacket."
We are interviewing him outside his house not far from the Druzhba gas-fired power plant. The air is still heavy with the smell of fuel oil - most thermal power plants switched to it in the early days of the crisis. Mr Savov's neighbour and his grandson walk past us. "Wait, these journalists from Moscow want to know if our attitude to Russia has changed since the gas crisis," Mr Savov stops him. "I will be brief," the neighbour replies. "If you obey the Big Brother, you have gas, if not, nuts to you."
Mr Savov laughs and shows us a page from the capital's popular newspaper Twenty-Four Hours. The article discusses the resumption of gas supplies and is entitled "Why is it that Russian people are so nice, and their state so awful?" "I for one would answer that the Russian people have no hand in any of this; it is the politicians that are denting the country's image," Mr Savov folds up the paper and heads towards his porch.
BROTHERLY OFFENCE
Georgi Siromashki, a pensioner from Ruse, while criticising the Russian authorities, also has kind words for the Russian people: "I had many friends in Moscow, and it is a pity our links have broken off." He is a former writer and journalist and in the 1980's he lived in the Soviet capital and still keeps a copy of the Druzhba magazine, in which his story was published.
Last Wednesday, Mr Siromashki travelled 250 kilometres by bus to attend a protest rally. "I would like the Government to tell me what I should live on if my pension is 90 euros, and I have to pay 60 euros for gas. And then they cannot even ensure regular deliveries," the pensioner complains. "Well, I know our top people have long been ripe for retirement. But how could Russia allow millions of its brothers to suffer?"
Frustration with Russia is felt mostly among the older people, although even before the crisis the pro-Russian feelings of elder Bulgarians were already on the decline. Back in 2000, according to a BBSS Gallup International poll, 40% of Bulgarians aged over 60 agreed that of all countries Russia was closest to them in culture and mentality. In 2007, the percentage was down to 32%. "But in the people's mind, especially among the older generation, Russia is still closest to us, even closer than our neighbours Macedonia and Greece," says Petr-Emil Mitev, director of the Bulgarian Centre for Sociological Studies. "This is why any damage inflicted on us by Russia is so painful," says Stanimir Ilchev, an MP from the ruling NDSV (National Movement for Stability and Progress) party. According to him, most of his fellow countrymen refuse to believe that Russia can defend its national interests and ambitions at Bulgaria's expense. "Those who remember the past refuse to understand why the problem could not be solved as before, when Todor Zhivkov phoned Leonid Brezhnev, and the problem would be solved in a matter of minutes," Ilchev says. "People thought that if Mr Stanishev complained to Mr Putin, the radiators would be warm in an hour's time. They knew that Bulgaria was a NATO and EU member, but believed that Russia would not leave it in the lurch." People "were shocked" when Prime Minister Stanishev, a national of Russia until 1996, had a personal meeting with Mr Putin but returned without gas.
YELENA CHERNENKO, ANDREI RUDAKOV (photos)