Despite an EU-brokered agreement on Monday to allow outside monitors to verify the gas flows and get the gas pumping immediately, the Russians continued to supply insufficient gas to power the system through to Europe yesterday while the Ukrainians also kept some pipelines closed, Brussels said.
“We opened the tap, and are ready to supply gas, but on the other side, the tap is closed,” said Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister.
But according to Brussels, the Russians were pumping less than a third of the volume of gas needed to supply Europe and deliberately entered it into the wrong pipeline across Ukraine. “If the agreement is not honoured, it means that Russia and Ukraine can no longer be considered reliable partners for the EU in matters of energy supply,” warned Barroso.
Despite the tough talk, the Europeans have little leverage over the Russians in the short term. Barroso was said to have had a “robust” conversation with Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, by telephone. “This is getting close to breaking point,” said a commission official. “There is a feeling that Putin is being duplicitous, to put it mildly.”
This is all very confusing. But if I am making sense of this all, Ukraine is keeping some pipelines shut is due to the fact that they can’t get enough gas to run their entire pipeline net work all at once. Thus, they have to make a choice about which pipelines to open up and which ones to keep closed. And Russia is deliberately making it impossible for them to do this.
But various newspapers determination to be even handed is making it difficult to make sense of it all. Why is it so hard for the Guardian to spell out in plain English why Ukraine is keeping some pipelines shut?
On the plus side, Russia should be commended for teaching Europe the importance of energy security. It is a lesson that they have long needed to learn.