Putin orders complete halt to Ukraine gas shipments

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/6197922.html

MOSCOW – Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has ordered Gazprom to stop all shipments of natural gas to Europe through Ukraine.

Russian gas is already not getting through the pipelines that cross Ukraine. Gazprom has blamed Ukraine, saying Russia has delivered the gas but Ukraine has shut down the pipelines and is stealing gas intended for Europe.

Ukraine insists that Russia stopped supplying the gas this morning.

Putin told Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller to go ahead and stop deliveries. He said this should be done “publicly and in the presence of international observers.”

Sixteen countries have stopped receiving Russian gas or have seen a sharp drop in supplies.

Europe depends on Russia for a quarter of its gas, 80 percent of which goes through Ukraine.

By early today, Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Romania, Croatia, Serbia and Turkey had all reported a halt in gas shipments, while France, Germany, Austria, Poland and Hungary had reported substantial drops in supplies from Russia.

In the Czech republic, gas operator RWE Transgas confirmed that Russian gas deliveries through Ukraine stopped completely overnight. The country still receives gas from another route from Norway and customers were not immediately affected, the company said.

Pentagon Chief Sees Opportunities In Russia and the War on Terrorism

By Walter Pincus www.washingtonpost.com
Monday, January 5, 2009; Page A09
As Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates becomes the bridge between the outgoing and incoming administrations, the views he has offered in interviews and essays since agreeing to remain as Pentagon chief merit a second look.

A longtime Russia analyst during his years with the CIA, Gates today sees Moscow as less of a threat than do many inside and outside the U.S. military establishment. On PBS’s “Charlie Rose Show” Dec. 17, he spoke of the historical insecurity of Russian leaders, recalling how Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev was embarrassed in Geneva in 1955 that President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s plane was bigger than his. “I mean, this is pretty deep-seated stuff, and so trying to avoid touching on one of Russia’s insecurities is almost impossible,” Gates concluded.