Strongman, The

I remember, Ukraine consumes 110–125 million cubic metres a day. Ukrainian consumers will suffer. I feel sorry for the common people.
    Alexei Miller : According to our reliable information, Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko personally ordered a unilateral suspension of talks with Gazprom on gas supply to Ukraine this year. Apparently, he does not feel sorry for the common people.
    Vladimir Putin : He is not sorry, but we are; everyone should feel sorry for them, because we are related to the people who live there.
    Alexei Miller : We also know that Ukraine produces about 20 billion cubic metres of gas a year, and the amount of stored gas in Ukraine at present exceeds its annual output. Given the good will of the Ukrainian leadership, the people of Ukraine should not suffer.
    Vladimir Putin : I agree. Start reductions as of today.
    Thus it was that Putin, feigning pity for the poor people of Ukraine, ‘agreed to a suggestion’ to cut supplies of gas intended for transit through Ukraine to Central and Western Europe. It was the first time Russia – or the Soviet Union – had ever cut supplies to its customers in the West. The action destroyed Russia’s fundamental argument, that it had always been, and would always be, a reliable energy supplier.
    The decision was the last straw for the European Union. The Americans had long been urging its partners to diversify supplies in order to break Moscow’s stranglehold. Now it became urgent. The EU began exploring every possible alternative energy supplier – from Algeria to Iran to Turkmenistan. Putin’s decision gave fresh impetus to the so-called Nabucco project, a planned pipeline that would bring gas to central Europe from Turkmenistan or Azerbaijan via Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania – avoiding Russia.
    Nabucco was seen as a rival to Russia’s own ‘alternative’ route – the South Stream pipeline, which would supply Russian gas via the Black Sea, Bulgaria and Serbia. Plans were already well advanced, too, for the Nord Stream pipeline under the Baltic Sea – yet another alternative to supplying Europe via Ukraine. Russia didn’t quite get (or pretended not to get) the Western argument, which was that Russia itself could no longer be trusted as a reliable supplier. Russia put the blame entirely on Ukraine as a transit country, and proffered Nord Stream and South Stream as routes for Russian gas that would avoid potential disruption in the future by Ukraine. The EU feared that this could leave not only Ukraine but also Poland (another transit country) open to blackmail in the future: Russia, faced with a dispute with Poland or Ukraine, would be able to cut gas to those countries while continuing to supply countries further west via the new pipelines. For the Europeans, Nabucco seemed a safer bet, cutting Russia out of the equation altogether. But the fact remained that potential supplies for Nabucco were scarce (Russia had already bought up Turkmen gas for years in advance), and in any case Russia, with its enormous energy resources, was fated to remain a major supplier for the foreseeable future. But after Putin’s intervention on 5 January 2009 it would never be fully trusted.
    It took until 20 January for Europe’s gas to start flowing again, following a deal struck in the middle of the night between Putin and the Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Ukraine would pay European prices, but with a discount for 2009, and in return Ukraine left the fee it charged for transit unchanged. Both sides agreed no longer to use the shady intermediary, Rosukrenergo, linked to Tymoshenko’s erstwhile colleague and now rival, President Yushchenko.
    The postscript to this story comes a year later. In February 2010 Viktor Yanukovych, the man supported in 2004 by Putin but overthrown by the Orange Revolution, was finally elected as Ukraine’s president. The Yushchenko presidency had proved disastrous, riven by internal rivalries, corruption and inept economic policies. Some saw it as the defeat of the Orange Revolution – but that was short-sighted. Yanukovych beat his main rival, Tymoshenko, in a fair election, so democracy itself was not an issue. Moreover, Yanukovych in power proved to be not entirely a Russian poodle. He did, it is true, quickly sign an agreement with President Medvedev to extend Russia’s lease on its Black Sea Fleet base in the Crimea for up to 30 years. In exchange he extracted a multi-year discount on Ukraine’s contracts for