By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Geopolitics: Six countries have their gas supplies cut off in the dead of winter by a Russia determined to regain its former empire and influence. The pipelines run through Ukraine. Welcome to the new "cold" war.
When Russia invaded Georgia, it was a shot across NATO's bow: Do not admit Georgia or Ukraine as members and thereby provide a security umbrella to protect coveted oil and gas supplies and the pipelines that might provide an increased measure of energy independence for the West. Do not move in and ruin the neighborhood.
A resurgent Russia and an ambitious Vladimir Putin, through his stand-in Dmitri Medvedev, are both flexing their muscles as energy prices fall and declining revenues threaten their global ambitions and the reconstituting of the old Soviet Union's territorial reach.
On Tuesday, Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Romania, Croatia and Turkey reported a halt in gas shipments from Russia in pipelines that run through Ukraine. They reported 5% to 30% drops in gas deliveries through Ukraine. Russia supplies Europe with a quarter of its gas, with 80% delivered through Ukraine.
Russia and Ukraine are locked in a dispute over pricing and overdue payments, and Moscow has claimed Ukraine has been siphoning gas from the shipments for its own purposes. Russia desperately needs more energy revenues, but there's more to it than that.
On Christmas Eve, President Dmitry Medvedev declared that his nation's "interests must be secured by all means available."
On Dec. 31, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin added that Ukrainian interference with Russian gas exports to Europe would lead to "serious consequences for the transit country."
Russia is blaming Ukraine for the current crisis, saying it had shut down three of four pipelines to Europe. "We have shut down nothing," responded Valentyn Zemlyansky, spokesman for Ukraine's Naftogaz. "There is simply no gas there; there is zero."
Added Oleksander Shlapak, economic adviser to Ukraine's president: "Our Russian partners are playing cat and mouse with us."
On Monday, Russian energy giant Gazprom announced it was cutting gas shipments through Ukraine by 65.3 million cubic meters, or 20%. That is the amount Moscow accuses Ukraine of diverting from its transit pipeline network. In a similar incident in 2006, several Western European countries saw their gas supplies drop by 30% or more.
Russia is not happy with Ukraine's support of Georgia or its desired integration with NATO and the West. Putin opposed the Orange Revolution that sprang up in reaction to a fraudulent election engineered to keep a Russian stooge in power. The Ukrainian people forced a new election and recognition of the victory of Viktor Yushchenko - who survived a poisoning, allegedly by elements of the KGB, permanently scarring his face.
Russia might use as an excuse for intervention in Ukraine the same excuse it used in Georgia and the same excuse Hitler used in the Sudetenland - the need to protect its ethnic brethren.
The Crimea, part of Ukraine, has a majority Russian-speaking population. As in Georgia, Russia is distributing passports to ethnic Russians there.
The peninsula hosts a naval base that supports Russia's Black Sea fleet. During the invasion of Georgia, Yushchenko made noise about the lease agreement by which Russia's Black Sea fleet operates out of the Crimean port of Sevastopol.
He objected to Russian ships supporting the invasion from Sevastopol to the point of asking for 72-hour notice of their movements. The Russian lease extends until 2017; Ukrainian officials say they have no intention of renewing the lease.
Since August, Russia has doubled its forces in Georgia's separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russian troops are 24 miles from Tbilisi and the pipelines that run through Georgian territory. They could take them at will.
Moscow may also be planning a move against Ukraine to "protect" the pipelines there from what it says is Ukrainian interference and to ensure its retention of its naval base and the protection of Russians in the Crimea. It wouldn't hurt if it also raised revenues for the Russian treasury.