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by justdrew » Fri Mar 07, 2014 10:30 pm
by seemslikeadream » Fri Mar 07, 2014 10:35 pm
Russia Invokes $2 Billion Ukraine Gas Debt Amid Crimea Crisis
By Daryna Krasnolutska, Kateryna Choursina & Anna Shiryaevskaya March 07, 2014
Ukraine
A Ukrainian soldier waits inside the Sevastopol tactical military brigade base in Sevastopol on March 3, 2014. Photographer: Filippo Monteforte/AFP via Getty Images
Russia said Ukraine’s natural gas debt climbed to almost $2 billion and signaled supplies may be cut, ratcheting up pressure on its neighbor as they scrap over the future of the Black Sea Crimea region.
Ukraine hasn’t made its February fuel payment and owes Russia $1.89 billion, according to gas export monopoly OAO Gazprom (OGZD), which halted supplies to Ukraine five years ago amid a pricing and debt dispute, curbing flows to Europe. Lawmakers in Moscow said they’d accept the results of a March 16 referendum on Crimea joining Russia as Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Ukraine’s premier, reiterated that his cabinet deems the vote illegal.
While racing to seal a bailout, Ukraine is struggling to keep hold of Crimea after pro-Russian forces seized control of it in the wake of Moscow-backed Viktor Yanukovych’s ouster as president. The standoff over the peninsula, once part of Russia and home to its Black Sea Fleet, prompted Western governments to threaten President Vladimir Putin with sanctions and Russia to underscore its clout as an energy supplier.
VIDEO: Goldman Says Investors `Sanguine' on Ukraine
“My gut feeling is they wouldn’t want to see a disruption going into western Europe, politically that would not be the best thing to happen at the moment,” Trevor Sikorski, the head of natural gas, coal and carbon at Energy Aspects Ltd. in London, said of Russia in a phone interview. “They are quite happy to put greater pressure on the prevailing government in Ukraine and certainly a gas supply disruption in March would be painful for the Ukrainians.”
Hryvnia, Bonds
Ukraine’s international bonds due in June fell 0.2 percent to 92.89 cents on the dollar as of 8:01 p.m. in Kiev, increasing the yield 1.2 percentage points to 41.207 percent. The hryvnia weakened 0.4 percent to 9.23 per dollar, data compiled by Bloomberg showed.
VIDEO: Obama Say U.S. Seeks to `Impose a Cost' on Russia
The central bank in Kiev bought dollars on the foreign-exchange market, the Interfax-Ukraine news service reported, citing traders.
Ukraine is a key transit nation for Russian gas to Europe, whose passage was halted for about two weeks in 2009 amid a dispute over supply and transit pricing and Ukraine’s gas debt between the neighboring nations.
“We can’t supply gas for free,” Gazprom Chief Executive Officer Alexey Miller said in the statement. “Either Ukraine pays off its debt and pays for current deliveries or there’s a risk of a return to the situation we saw at the start of 2009.”
‘Real Danger’
Ukraine had 13.1 billion cubic meters of natural gas in storage facilities as of Jan. 12, according to Ukrtransgaz, a unit of state gas company NAK Naftogaz Ukrainy. The country needs to import about 30 billion cubic meters of the fuel a year, in addition to domestic production of about 20 billion cubic meters, Energy Minister Yuriy Prodan said March 5.
A gas cutoff is “an absolutely real danger because whatever Gazprom’s commercial motives -- and they want to sell their gas and do their business -- the problem is that the political relationships obviously are worse than they have ever been and the debt is very big,” Simon Pirani, senior research fellow at Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, said by phone.
There’s no indication that there’s “much risk” of a gas shortage in Ukraine, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters traveling with U.S. President Barack Obama on Air Force One.
“Russia prides itself on being a reliable source of energy to countries around the world,” and it may not want to “undermine” its reputation, Earnest said.
IMF Talks
As Gazprom released its statement, Yatsenyuk was meeting in Kiev with an International Monetary Fund mission over a bailout. The country needs “urgent” financial aid, he said on the government’s website.
The Washington-based lender is prepared to support Ukraine’s program for economic change and is impressed by the government’s commitment, European department director Reza Moghadam said in a statement.
Ukraine’s economy is suffering in the wake of three months of street protests that toppled Yanukovych after at least 100 demonstrators and policemen were killed. While Russia halted disbursement of a $15 billion rescue package after Yanukovych fled to Moscow, Europe and the U.S have pledged financial aid.
The European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm, this week outlined an 11 billion-euro ($15 billion) package of loans and grants for the coming years tied to the government in Kiev agreeing on an IMF loan
While the Republican-run U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill, 385-23, on March 6 to allow $1 billion in loan guarantees for Ukraine, the Senate controlled by Obama’s Democratic party has no immediate plans to follow suit.
Leaders in the Senate are sensitive to trying to give the administration room to maneuver as circumstances change rapidly, said a Democratic aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss party strategy.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, told reporters March 4 that he wanted to move “as soon as” possible on aid to Ukraine.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, is working with committee Republicans on a package of aid for Ukraine and sanctions against Russia. The panel is scheduled to vote on the legislation, which hasn’t yet been made public, on March 11.
Lavrov’s Warning
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry against sanctions in a phone call today, according to Russia’s Interfax news agency.
“Lavrov cautioned against hasty and ill-considered moves that can damage Russian-American relations, especially sanctions, which would inevitably boomerang on the United States,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement cited by Interfax.
Ukraine’s political crisis was sparked when Yanukovych rejected an EU integration pact in November in favor of a $15 billion bailout from Russia, which opposed the deal. The focus has now shifted to the separatist mood in Crimea.
Former Ukrainian Premier Yulia Tymoshenko, who was jailed under Yanukovych’s rule, said any referendum on the region would have to include all Ukrainians and can’t be conducted in the presence of Russian forces. The vote offers a choice between continued autonomy within Ukraine and joining Russia.
“Today there are well-armed Russian troops,” she said at a conference in Dublin before going to Berlin for medical treatment. “I would like to ask whether one can have an open referendum under the Kalashnikov.”
‘No Concessions’
Yatsenyuk told reporters in Kiev today that the international community won’t recognize the referendum.
“I want to be very clear: Crimea was, is and will be an integral part of Ukraine,” he said. “No concessions. Full stop.”
Russia’s parliament will discuss a bill that would pave the way for the switch this month. Both houses said today they’d back the move, which has drawn rebukes from the West as Putin opens the 2014 Paralympic Games in Sochi.
The EU and the U.S. accuse Russia of being behind the separatist unrest in Crimea, a claim Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, denied again today. The West has urged Russia to pull back, and began yesterday to impose sanctions.
The U.S. banned visas for Russian officials and others it said were complicit in violating Ukraine’s sovereignty. Obama signed an order authorizing financial sanctions, while EU leaders halted trade and visa talks with Russia and threatened punitive economic measures.
‘Serious Consequences’
The U.S. sent six F-15 fighter jets to Lithuania and will dispatch 12 additional F-16s to Poland, the two countries’ defense ministries said yesterday. The U.S. Navy sent the guided-missile destroyer USS Truxtun into the Black Sea in what it called a routine visit unrelated to events in Ukraine.
If Russia doesn’t back down, it risks “serious consequences from Europe,” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said today on France Info radio. The U.S. and allies including Japan this week halted preparations for the Group of Eight summit planned for June in Sochi.
Putin and Obama hold differing views on the crisis, though U.S.-Russia relations shouldn’t be sacrificed, the Kremlin said in a statement on the leaders’ latest phone conversation. Russia says the armed men who seized key facilities in Crimea are acting independently amid perceived threats to Russian speakers following the change of power in Kiev.
Yanukovych fled for Russia days after signing an EU-brokered peace accord. He says he was forced to leave amid threats to his life and claims to still be Ukraine’s true leader, a view Russia shares.
Trust ‘Exhausted’
Calls for Russia to hold joint negotiations with Kiev aren’t credible after the Ukrainian government failed to stand by the earlier accord, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
“This is laughable,” Peskov said on state television today. “Because our trust in such ‘guarantees’ has been probably been exhausted with what happened following the document signed by Yanukovych.”
Lawmakers in Crimea voted yesterday on a nonbinding measure to become part of Russia if voters agree in the referendum. They also asked Putin to begin drafting procedures for making the province a part of the Russian Federation, the state-run Crimean Information Agency reported. The move would reverse the 1954 transfer of Crimea to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
People who identify themselves as ethnic Russians comprise 59 percent of Crimea’s population of about 2 million, with 24 percent Ukrainian and 12 percent Tatar, 2001 census data show.
Russian Troops
Russia has 16,000 troops in Crimea, according to the Russian ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin. Ukrainian border guards put the number at 30,000, the Interfax news service said today. Refat Chubarov, leader of the executive body of Crimea’s Tatar population, called yesterday for a United Nations peacekeeping mission to ease tensions.
Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe were blocked at a Crimean checkpoint by armed men, the AFP news service reported today.
The mission ignored the “OSCE cornerstone principle of consensus, without accounting for the opinions and recommendations of the Russian side,” the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement, adding that the delegation also failed to wait for invitations from Crimean authorities.
by seemslikeadream » Fri Mar 07, 2014 10:35 pm
The Sanctions Madness on Russia
March 7, 2014
Official Washington is in full meltdown mode as politicians and pundits frantically one-up each other in over-the-top rhetoric on the Ukraine crisis. But now the madness is shifting into legislative excesses to sanction Russia, notes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
By Paul R. Pillar
Seventeen years ago, Richard Haass, now president of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote an article titled “Sanctioning Madness.” The crux of his argument was:
“With a few exceptions, the growing use of economic sanctions to promote foreign policy objectives is deplorable. This is not simply because sanctions are expensive, although they are. Nor is it strictly a matter of whether sanctions ‘work’; the answer to that question invariably depends on how demanding a task is set for a particular sanction. Rather, the problem with economic sanctions is that they frequently contribute little to American foreign policy goals while being costly and even counterproductive.”
Haass was not saying to give up sanctions entirely. But they should not be the go-to tool, reached for habitually and unthinkingly, to address any foreign policy problem under the sun.
The American sanctions habit has not lessened at all during the intervening years, especially on Capitol Hill. Now Congress is getting out its sanctions pen yet again to see what it can do to Russia in response to the Crimean crisis. This may be an even clearer indication of the sanctions addiction than the recent unsuccessful effort to impose more sanctions on Iran, given that the latter move was more of a calculated attempt to sabotage an ongoing negotiation.
The multiple drawbacks and limitations of economic sanctions are too infrequently considered before sanctions are enacted. These include issues of who exactly in the target country will be hurt and who might actually benefit. They also include consideration of counterproductive political reactions, including resistance to be seen buckling under pressure.
The costs, including economic costs, to ourselves of sanctions we impose are insufficiently acknowledged. In some situations trade patterns are such that the costs to ourselves may be minimal, but in those circumstances, and for that very reason, the desired impact on the target country is likely to be minimal as well.
This may be the case with Russia today, with which the European Union has much more trade than the United States. Unilateral U.S. sanctions are thus likely to be ineffective with regard to Russia, while being needlessly disruptive to cooperation and common purpose with regard to the Europeans. Of course, any policy conducted with an attitude of “f—- the E.U.” is not likely to be swayed by that concept.
The most important shortcoming to how sanctions tend to be used is a failure to link them carefully to the behavior we would like to see on the part of the target government. This means being very clear about exactly what it is to which we want the other side to say yes. It also means being clear in our own minds how the sanctions fit into an overall set of incentives and disincentives that will make saying yes seem more attractive than the alternative.
Ask someone pushing for sanctions against Russia today what they are intended to accomplish, and the answer is likely to be an end to Russian military occupation of Crimea. But that concept needs clarification, given that a reversal of moves made over the past week would still leave a Russian military presence on the peninsula by virtue of previous treaties and base leases.
Needed also is a more complete package of understandings with the Ukrainians on matters of interest and concern to Russia, ranging from Ukraine not joining NATO to the status of the Russian language within Ukraine. It is unlikely that Russian military withdrawals will take place in the absence of some such understandings. It is thus unlikely U.S. sanctions would do any good unless carefully integrated into such a larger package.
The sanctions habit has persisted because imposing sanctions is a primitive, easy way to “do something” about difficult problems on which there is an urge to do something. It is a gesture. Congress needs to decide whether gestures are more important than making progress in getting out of the current crisis.
by FourthBase » Fri Mar 07, 2014 10:41 pm
justdrew » 07 Mar 2014 21:12 wrote:I notice you didn't answer the question
by FourthBase » Fri Mar 07, 2014 10:46 pm
justdrew » 07 Mar 2014 21:30 wrote:but really, other than manipulative unproven wild rumors provided by people highly likely to be linked to and openly part of efforts to destabilize Russia, from a long time ago, I don't recall just exactly what we're supposed to be so outraged at Putin about. He a Patriot and Leader and he's pulled his country back from the brink of chaos. His position give him a lot more power in his country than a US President has, it could seem a bit weird, but that's how they organize themselves as a nation. so be it. Sure, there are political things I find questionable or "bad," but I recognize and accept that Russia is not America and I don't pretend to expect them to make choices entirely congruent with our tastes on every matter...
by FourthBase » Fri Mar 07, 2014 11:03 pm
justdrew » 07 Mar 2014 21:30 wrote:but really, other than manipulative unproven wild rumors provided by people highly likely to be linked to and openly part of efforts to destabilize Russia, from a long time ago, I don't recall just exactly what we're supposed to be so outraged at Putin about. He a Patriot and Leader and he's pulled his country back from the brink of chaos. His position give him a lot more power in his country than a US President has, it could seem a bit weird, but that's how they organize themselves as a nation. so be it. Sure, there are political things I find questionable or "bad," but I recognize and accept that Russia is not America and I don't pretend to expect them to make choices entirely congruent with our tastes on every matter...
by FourthBase » Fri Mar 07, 2014 11:08 pm
by seemslikeadream » Fri Mar 07, 2014 11:46 pm
by FourthBase » Fri Mar 07, 2014 11:58 pm
by justdrew » Sat Mar 08, 2014 2:48 am
by smiths » Sat Mar 08, 2014 6:11 am
by smiths » Sat Mar 08, 2014 6:11 am
by Peachtree Pam » Sat Mar 08, 2014 8:38 am
China treads cautiously after pro-US coup in Ukraine
By James Cogan
5 March 2014
The response of China to the US- and European Union-backed coup in Ukraine, and Russia’s subsequent intervention to maintain control over the Crimean peninsula, is being closely monitored by political leaders and strategic analysts around the world. Any decision by Beijing to openly support Moscow’s actions would dramatically escalate the global tensions that now exist.
To this point, the Chinese government has engaged in a diplomatic balancing act, refusing to condemn either the pro-Western coup or Russia’s response. At a press conference in Beijing on Sunday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Qin Gang stressed “China’s long-standing position not to interfere in others’ internal affairs” and voiced support for Ukraine’s “independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity”—without indicating who China believed had violated it. At a press conference the next day, Gang refused to voice support for Russia’s actions, but equally refused to state whether China recognised the legitimacy of the coup-installed government in Kiev or to condemn the Russian incursion into Crimea.
In Russia, the Putin government and loyal media outlets portrayed China’s stance as supportive. The Russian foreign ministry declared on Monday that Moscow and Beijing had “broadly coinciding views… in connection to the situation in Ukraine and around it.” In the United States, by contrast, the Wall Street Journal highlighted the “noncommittal remarks” coming from the Chinese government.
China’s manoeuvring continued yesterday in the United Nations Security Council. As American and European representatives issued bellicose denunciations of Russia and threatened unspecified retaliation, Chinese ambassador Liu Jieyi repeated the pro forma statement of China’s support for “the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of another country” and “respect for Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Immense Chinese strategic and economic interests are threatened by the developments in Ukraine. For well over a decade-and-a-half, Beijing has carefully cultivated economic ties and military relations with Russia, embodied in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), initially to counter US interventions in Central Asia. As well as Russia, the SCO includes the former Soviet Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and has been the vehicle for China to pursue access to land-transported energy and raw materials, independent of the US-controlled sea lanes from the Middle East and Africa.
In recent years, China has extended its access to Eurasian resources further west. It has particularly sought to secure agricultural commodities from Ukraine to reduce its dependence on the US and close US allies such as Australia. In 2012, the Export-Import Bank of China lent $US3 billion to Ukraine for agricultural development, with the loan to be repaid by exports of corn rather than currency. In June 2013, a major Chinese state-owned corporation signed an estimated $2.6 billion, 50-year contract to lease as much as three million square hectares of Ukrainian farmland—the largest foreign land deal ever made by Chinese concerns. Produce is to be sold to Chinese buyers at fixed prices. The first 100,000 hectares of farmland, in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, is under production.
At the same time, China has made significant arms purchases from Ukraine, including its first aircraft carrier, now operational as the Liaoning.
Ukrainian-Chinese economic relations appeared set to massively expand after Victor Yanukovych’s government announced on November 21 last year that it was abandoning a proposed “association agreement” with the European Union and would instead seek closer cooperation with Russia.
From December 3 to 6, as fascistic and right-wing organisations held pro-US, pro-EU and anti-government protests in Kiev, Yanukovych travelled to Beijing to sign more than 20 agreements that would bring tens of billions of dollars of Chinese investment into Ukraine.
As early as 2015, Chinese state banks were to start lending $15 billion for housing construction. Some $13 billion was to be invested on the construction of a new deep-sea port, grain export terminals and an associated industrial park in Crimea. The National Bank of Ukraine was to be provided with $5 billion in Chinese renminbi, so trade could be carried out directly in the Chinese currency. Other projects included the construction of a gas-refining plant and further agricultural investments. In exchange, Ukraine committed to using Chinese construction companies, equipment and building materials, and significantly increasingly agricultural exports to China.
The agreements signed with China would have been a factor in the decisions taken by the Obama administration and its European allies to step up their support for their proxy forces in Ukraine seeking to bring down Yanukovych’s government.
US strategy since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 has been aimed at enforcing American dominance over the vast Eurasian landmass. This agenda has been pursued through a succession of wars, proxy wars and interventions, most notably Iraq (1991), the Balkans (1994–96), Serbia (1999), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), the Ukraine “Orange Revolution” (2004) and the Georgia crisis (2008), as well as war scares on the Korean peninsula and with Iran.
As part of an agenda to weaken Russia, the US has actively sought the installation of a government in Ukraine that would orient toward the European Union and could potentially be brought into NATO.
In Asia, the Obama administration is pursuing a naked policy of undermining Chinese interests across the region. It has provocatively encouraged the Philippines and Japan to assert claims over disputed territories in the South and East China seas, to the point that the prospect of war between Japan and China is being openly discussed by both sides. The US “pivot” to Asia includes concentrating 60 percent of American naval and air forces in Asia and strengthening its military alliances with Japan and Australia, and its relations with India, in preparation for all-out war.
All the dilemmas that confront the Chinese ruling elite are brought into stark focus by the Ukraine crisis. Its interests and ambitions are being blocked and thwarted by US imperialism in every part of the world.
The Beijing regime has historically opposed the dismemberment of existing national states, due to its concerns that separatism among its own ethnic minorities could be stoked by the US to provoke internal instability or even to break away entire swathes of territory from China. At the very centre of its foreign policy is the insistence that, regardless of the views of the population in Taiwan, the island is an inseparable part of China that must be reunified with the mainland.
Beijing is acutely conscious that if it gave any support to referendums on the separation of Crimea or other Russian-controlled areas from Ukraine it would provide grist to the mill for agitation that Taiwan, Tibet, the western Uighur-populated province of Xinjiang and potentially even Hong Kong be given votes on independence. It would also effectively guarantee that the new regime installed in Kiev would repudiate the agreements that China signed with Yanukovych just three months ago—though that may well take place on the dictates of Washington and the EU anyway.
At the same time, the aggressive US stance in Asia has made the Chinese ruling elite even more dependent on Russia as its only potential ally and supplier of energy and raw materials in the event of conflict. Chinese leaders now face a concerted drive by the US and EU to not just install a puppet government in Kiev, but to isolate, weaken and ultimately collapse Putin’s regime and reduce Russia to a semi-colonial status. China, they are well aware, would be next.
The relentless, reckless and ruthless pressure being brought to bear by US imperialism and its allies on the increasingly desperate Russian and Chinese ruling elites poses the danger of triggering military confrontations that escalate into nuclear war. It is a direct threat to the lives of hundreds of millions of workers and youth around the world that must be answered by the development of an international anti-war movement, based on a socialist perspective.
by Searcher08 » Sat Mar 08, 2014 9:13 am
justdrew » Sat Mar 08, 2014 6:48 am wrote:no 4th base, I wouldn't accuse you of blinders, rather the near opposite, the willingness to believe whatever you hear if it's about some one/place you already "don't like"
you ignore the fact that psiwar rumor mongering is mode of action #1, nothing like evidence exists for your apartment bombings theory. It's just bullshit stories spread to destabilize the leadership of that country, FOR ALL WE KNOW. Bombing those apartment buildings is just the sort of thing those Chechen sonsofbitches murdering assholes would do. Don't glamorize or excuse their actions either. They took up arms and decided to kill people to achieve their pointless meaningless political goals. They decided to kill people so they could become "the boss" - fuck them. They got what they deserved, or at least... what anyone with a brain should have expected.
The gas? BFD. They assumed it would tranq everyone, didn't realize that wouldn't work. I'd guess the people who sold it said it would. Anyway, big deal, should they have just given up and surrendered to the hostage takers? wtf would you expect to happen there?
"the countless blatant assassinations" - really? Blatant? no murders ever occur in Russia that aren't assassinations? The forces long seeking to destabilize the country have never been known to kill their own in a false flag op? You know they do that.
The fact is, nothing of the above comes from a good source and are all readily questionable in reality, if you don't start out ASSUMING those stories to be true.
I don't think the guys a saint, though for all we know, he's mankind's last hope, the only remaining piece on the board with options to act on. but hey.
My mind is simply not made up. You want to talk about blinders?
Your false CERTAINTY is your main blinder.
by FourthBase » Sat Mar 08, 2014 9:54 am
justdrew » 08 Mar 2014 01:48 wrote:no 4th base, I wouldn't accuse you of blinders, rather the near opposite, the willingness to believe whatever you hear if it's about some one/place you already "don't like"
you ignore the fact that psiwar rumor mongering is mode of action #1, nothing like evidence exists for your apartment bombings theory. It's just bullshit stories spread to destabilize the leadership of that country, FOR ALL WE KNOW. Bombing those apartment buildings is just the sort of thing those Chechen sonsofbitches murdering assholes would do. Don't glamorize or excuse their actions either. They took up arms and decided to kill people to achieve their pointless meaningless political goals. They decided to kill people so they could become "the boss" - fuck them. They got what they deserved, or at least... what anyone with a brain should have expected.
The gas? BFD. They assumed it would tranq everyone, didn't realize that wouldn't work. I'd guess the people who sold it said it would. Anyway, big deal, should they have just given up and surrendered to the hostage takers? wtf would you expect to happen there?
"the countless blatant assassinations" - really? Blatant? no murders ever occur in Russia that aren't assassinations? The forces long seeking to destabilize the country have never been known to kill their own in a false flag op? You know they do that.
The fact is, nothing of the above comes from a good source and are all readily questionable in reality, if you don't start out ASSUMING those stories to be true.
I don't think the guys a saint, though for all we know, he's mankind's last hope, the only remaining piece on the board with options to act on. but hey.
My mind is simply not made up. You want to talk about blinders?
Your false CERTAINTY is your main blinder.
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