A and B sat on the pipe

The gas pipe has been a familiar component of Russian-Ukrainian stories for many years. For some time now, these stories have acquired a Yuletide connection: the real conflict occurs on New Year’s Eve, the denouement comes at the end of the Yuletide week and is always expected as a miracle. The parties do not seem to suggest any rational basis for a successful resolution; on the contrary, the sequence of actions and dramatic logic here work in the opposite direction, the obstacles grow like a snowball, and every time it seems that the end is approaching, one of the parties turns the board over. This year seems to have reached its climax.

Although at first everything developed in the usual way. By the end of the year, people started talking about Ukrainian debts. As usual, they took place. The familiarity and, one might say, the normality of the situation itself did not seem to provide for a hysterical breakdown in the rhetoric of the Russian media, but the hysteria grew. In principle, this was also included in the program: passions were heating up, and the highest point was to come on December 31. And everything seemed to be heading towards this. They managed to sort out the story with the debts: in Kyiv, as usual, for this purpose, the hryvnia was sharply strengthened - for exactly two days; Tymoshenko managed to make several loud statements about speculation and fraud of the National Bank together with the president, but these are already side effects. Then there were disputes about the price.

Also, in principle, a common thing, the dramaturgy is written according to the notes. One side says: “European prices”, the other talks about a “phased transition”, while they were talking about amounts within two and a half hundred dollars, and somewhere in this range a consensus was expected. At least that's what logic and common sense required. But then one of the parties turns the board over: yesterday we were satisfied with 250 USD, but today we are no longer satisfied, Gazprom suddenly declares. The price almost doubles, becomes predictably unacceptable for Kyiv, and negotiations are stopped. The same hysteria is happening in the Russian media, the Ukrainian media are behaving much calmer, although in theory it should be the other way around: after all, a cold winter awaits the Ukrainians. But, apparently, in Kyiv they were waiting for the usual New Year's happening: immediately after the “Irony of Fate”, from now on there will be a shutdown of the valve on the air. The calmness of Ukrainians is partly explained by the simple knowledge that gas and a pipe are inseparable things, and if you have gas and we have a pipe, then sooner or later we will have to come to an agreement.

However, on December 31, the end did not come. And it didn’t come on January 1 either. And at some point it became clear that this time the game was playing by different rules, or that Gazprom was playing a different game in principle. Excessive and inadequate PR on the one hand and a rather sluggish and calm reaction to it on the other made us think that it was all a matter of “checkers”, in other words, all the steam (read: gas) was going to the whistle.

The Russian side is trying to convey a certain message to the virtual addressee. And if the idea is simply that “thieving crests”, due to national characteristics, are “stabbing the gas”, then the game is not worth the candle: for many years, all the intended recipients of Russian channels have learned this poor idea. It is unlikely that the regular staged dialogues between Putin and Miller were intended to convey precisely this to the listeners. After all, there is a third player - the EU. Europe is “freezing” without gas (federal channels also talk about this), Ukraine is a worthless transit country—probably that’s the whole point. The last of the dramatic nodes - the ceremonial “launch” of gas through Sudzha, along a route that was obviously unacceptable for the Ukrainians, apparently assumed the same result: the gas would not go anywhere, and the last resort would be... the Ukrainian pipeline.

Ukrainian politicians had to explain themselves one way or another. Paradoxically, they had to explain the logic of the Russian game. The latest clarification came from the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on National Security and Defense Anatoly Gritsenko; it makes sense to quote it almost verbatim. Gritsenko names four components of the “Russian gas strategy.”

The first is the most uninteresting: this is Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s personal hostility towards President Viktor Yushchenko. It’s all together - NATO, the Holodomor, friendship with Georgia... but this is politics, in the end. The other component concerns the pipe. The point is to prove to the European Union that it makes sense to build gas pipelines bypassing Ukraine. The third goal is to bankrupt Naftogaz and, accordingly, take control of the Ukrainian pipeline - and the Ukrainian situation as a whole. Finally, the last one: Gazprom is trying to improve its own affairs, but its affairs are bad. The monopoly is losing revenue while its debts are growing. In a crisis situation, Europe (as well as Ukraine) no longer needs gas in the same volumes. Gazprom cannot pay off its loans and is trying to go all-in.

In principle, if Ukraine actually withstood the psychic attack and - at least for the sake of precedent - this time did without speculative surpluses of Russian gas, it would be to its benefit. And if, in the long term, Europe decides to abandon its connection to the Ukrainian pipeline, and the Ukrainian economy, even if forced, stops “working for the pipeline” - this, in fact, is what the doctor ordered. In the end, everything that is done is for the better. If in our old fairy tale about the pipe A falls and B disappears, we will somehow learn to live without the fairy tale. In the current realities.

The latest realities are as follows: Putin and Tymoshenko still sign an agreement according to which Ukraine receives a 20% discount on the “European price” for gas. And transit this year will be carried out at last year’s tariffs. The contract between Gazprom and Naftogaz of Ukraine will be direct, without the participation of Rosukrenergo. And this should be understood in such a way that Tymoshenko finally outplayed “Yushchenko’s people” and earned the very points that she intended to earn back in the fall. With more bang and, accordingly, with greater effect. In terms of numbers, everything looks like this.

The “European price” stated in the documents is $470. Minus 20% - $376 per thousand cubic meters. This is more than two times more than last year’s price and 1.5 times more than the price that Russia initially offered ($250). However, by the middle of the year it is expected (and seemingly promised) that the “European price” will decrease; as for transit, the previous agreement was signed before January 31, 2010. Now it has been cancelled, and as of January 1, 2010, Ukraine can earn money on transit at European tariffs. After nightly negotiations between Putin and Tymoshenko, the plot again moved to the domestic political plane. But besides Tymoshenko’s obvious gain, there are also some “delayed damages.” First of all, the economic damage from the three-week festival, which the parties will have to divide, and not necessarily equally.

Kyiv