Come on gas!

Gazprom and the Ukrainian Naftogaz failed to agree on gas prices in 2009 and, accordingly, conclude a new gas supply contract. On January 1, Russia stopped supplying gas to Ukraine. True, transportation to Europe through Ukraine continued for some time, but on January 4, Gazprom accused Ukraine of, as it is called in civilized language, unauthorized selection of transit gas (65 million cubic meters in four days), and on January 6, gas supplies to Europe were reduced . By the evening of January 6, Bulgaria, Hungary, Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina announced that Russian gas supplies to them had ceased. Austria, the Czech Republic and Romania later reported the same. Outages were noted in France, Germany, and Italy.

Thus, the European Union, which declared on January 2 that it was not going to intervene in the conflict, has seriously suffered because of it, and now on January 8, negotiations between Gazprom and representatives of the European Commission and the European Parliament are scheduled to take place in Brussels. On January 7, when all supplies were suspended, the European Commission proposed sending observers to Ukraine to measure the pressure of gas coming from Russia. Ukraine, represented by Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, has already agreed to this. Now Gazprom claims that Ukraine has blocked all pipelines transporting Russian gas to Europe. Naftogaz responds that it was Russia itself that stopped supplies.