Because of the importance that energy has at the moment, it is sad and worrying to see an authoritarian, President Putin, destabilizing a democratically-elected leader of another country, Ukraine, in what is still a young democracy.
Let us hear other democracies stand up for the fledgling democracy and againt the authoritarian. It is now that it counts!
Onésimo Alvarez-Moro
See article:
The sacking of Ukraine's government has raised new questions over last week's agreement with Russia on gas prices, already starting to look fragile only days after it was signed.
Analysts say the framework deal reached on January 4 leaves many questions unresolved. Its reliance on cheap gas from central Asian states, mostly Turkmenistan, to offset a more than four-fold increase in the price of Russian gas for Ukraine could be vulnerable to attempts by those states to raise their own prices.
Few expect the gas deal to be reopened before Ukrainian parliamentary elections on March 26. But this week's parliamentary clashes in Kiev have made clear the main opposition parties will fight the elections on a pledge to renegotiate the deal, obliging them to try to do so if they win.
That could lead to further uncertainties over Russian gas supplies to western Europe - 80 per cent of which travel across Ukraine - in the middle of Russia's presidency of the Group of Eight industrialised nations.
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