The third gas war. Gazprom threatens to stop transit to Europe through Ukraine

The hostages of the next gas conflict between Kyiv and Moscow can again be Europeans

Photo: Valery Sharifullin, TASS

Gazprom announced that he was starting the procedure for terminating gas contracts with Ukraine. Right now, Europe does not threaten to be left without Russian gas, but Europeans remember the past gas wars well, which led to interruptions in supplies in 2006 and 2009.

• The new gas war is the result of almost four -year trials of Gazprom and the Ukrainian Naftogaz.
• The dispute concerned already forgotten gas contracts, which Gazprom and Naftogaz signed in 2009 after the negotiations of Vladimir Putin and Yulia Tymoshenko. According to them, Naftogaz took obligations to buy Russian gas (and with a shortage - to pay the difference on the principle of “bay or pay”), and Gazprom - to pump at least 110 billion cubic meters through the territory of Ukraine to Europe. m of gas per year. Both contracts have been calculated before the end of 2019, but since 2014, the parties dispute them and require mutual compensation in the courts (this can be read in detail here ).
• The point in the conflict this week was set by Stockholm arbitration. In short: according to the results of all the proceedings, Gazprom turned out to be Naftogaz $ 2.56 billion.
• The solution looks controversial. The court took into account the economic difficulties of Ukraine (having reduced the volume of gas mandatory from Gazprom by more than 10 times), but did not take into account the arguments of Gazprom that the demand for gas in Europe fell and the previous agreements on the transit of the company became unprofitable. Kommersant calculated that, due to the decision of the arbitration, Gazprom will lose $ 450 million per year (even if it retains the volume of transit at the record level last year).
• After the day of Gazprom’s reproduction, Alexei Miller announced that the concern did not agree that the economic problems of Ukraine were solved at his expense, and therefore immediately launches the procedure for terminating both gas contracts with Naftogaz.
• All this does not mean that tomorrow Europe will be left without gas ( unlike Ukraine). Legal procedures will take at least several months. In addition, Gazprom is not yet able to do without the Ukrainian gas transmission system - in 2017, almost half of the supply of Russian gas to Europe came to transit through Ukraine.

What am I to me?

In combination with yesterday’s performance by Vladimir Putin about the latest nuclear weapons (in Europe and the USA he was, of course, condemned it today), the beginning of a new gas war, the hostage of which Europeans can become, will definitely not add glasses to Russia. There were few hopes for warming with the West on the eve of the next presidential term of Vladimir Putin, but there are more and more reasons for aggravating relations.

MONEY

Trump's trading war brought down markets

Yesterday, Donald Trump announced that next week he would introduce a 25% fee for steel imports and 10% for aluminum imports. In addition to the predictable fall of consumer and aluminum manufacturers, world indices-DOW Jones, S&P 500 and Nikkei decreased. Russia, along with everyone, expressed concern with these measures, although in fact there is nothing to worry about: the largest Russian metallurgists, including Severstal, NLMK and Evraz, almost or do not supply steel in the United States at all. What will happen to the world market now and whether the "trade war" will begin, you can read here .

Weinstein Company found a buyer

The Harvey and Robert Weinstein Studio-The Weinstein Company- agreed on a deal with a group of investors, led by a former small business curator in the Barack Obama administration Maria Contraras-Swit and billionaire Ron Berkel. The new owners will take over the company's debts by $ 225 million and invest another $ 275 million - in this way, Weinstein Company will be able to avoid bankruptcy . Contraras-Swit has already announced that she intends to “restart” the company, retaining about 150 jobs, and at the same time create a fund from which compensation will be paid to the victims of Harvey Weinstein.

Wagner PMC could be random

Journalists of the German publication Spiegel spent two weeks in Syria, communicating with all kinds of eyewitnesses of the February armed clash in Der-Ez-Zor, in which, as reported , tens and even hundreds of Wagner PMCs could die and suffer. The Spiegel investigationis approved by the opposite: the Russians did not participate in the conflict at all, but came under large -scale shelling of the US military by accident, as they were in the village nearby. As a result, no more than 20 fighters died, the newspaper writes.

PRACTICE

Britain freezes assets

This week in the UK, the real estate of a foreigner who had not passed the cleanliness of capital was frozen for the first time - according to “anti -washing” amendments that entered into force in January, in order to arrest suspicious assets, British officials can now go directly to the court without initiating the case. What is the essence of the innovations and what is now threatening foreign assets in the UK, we explain here .

How to get out of the black list of the Central Bank

The Central Bank deleted 2400 bank customers from black lists, half of the rehabilitated - Sberbank clients. How many people are left in them is unknown. In October 2017, Rosfinmonitoring spoke about 460 thousand customers who were suspected of washing a total of 180 billion rubles. The Central Bank began to send lists of suspicious customers in June 2017. Although banks are not obliged to block access to their services, in fact, the list means a shutdown from the banking system. In November, in response to the rapid indignation of customers, the Central Bank and Rosfinmonitoring developed a mechanism for leaving the black list. For this you need:

• Contact the bank and ask to explain why you were stopped serving. You must answer in writing indicating the documents on the basis of which the bank can remove you from the stoplist.
• Provide these documents.
• If they are in order, the bank is obliged to either delete you from the list and notify you of the Central Bank, or explain why this is impossible.
• If the bank refused, contact the Central Bank.

Elabuga and Nefteyugansk - in the world top Startups

American Inc. Published an annual rating of the fastest growing companies Inc. 5000 Europe. Top 10 startups included two Russian companies. The supplier of oil and gas equipment New Teck Well Service from Nefteyugansk is in third place, and the manufacturer of the Interskol power tools from Elabuga is in the seventh. In total, the ranking of 585 companies from Russia, and only 171 of them are based in Moscow: for example, Delivery Club, IVI.ru and Litres. Leaders in the number of fast -growing projects - Sweden, Estonia and Norway.

FUTURE

Robot uprising is just around the corner

Former Google Head Eric Schmidtpredicted the implementation of "inspired by the cinema of deadly scripts." The cosmic pace of development of artificial intelligence especially scares him in the context of the military aspirations of Russia and China, which has already left far behind both Europe and the USA. “We have no analogues of the Chinese program, but they are needed,” Schmidt believes.

Fun

The forbidden fruit is sweet

The Azino777 online casino was in 14th place in the number of views of its video rod in 2017, having overtook Yandex, Coca-Cola and Tele2. The “Azino three axes” gained such popularity, first of all, among young people - thanks to the virus commercial (it was parodied even in “Evening Urgant”) with the participation of the famous rapper Viti AK47, which turned on before the start of films and series on pirate resources. But here is the most interesting: the casino is included in the register of Roskomnadzor, and advertising of gambling on the Internet is prohibited by law. “The fact that the illegal gambling business is part of the top 15 advertisers is monstrous,” they were indignant at the Internet video.

Peter Mironenko