Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
That energy weapon is in fact still holstered.

The Ukrainians failed to pay bills at less than half the price per unit that Western Europeans pay for the same good.
So they basically get their terribly inefficient energy sector subsidized by Russia, are in no way cooperative about legitimate Russian interests in regard to Russian majority regions in Ukraine and generally didn't behave as we would want states to behave in the EU, for example.

I don't want to think about what the Bush government would have done to the Ukraine if it had been in Putin's position.

Cutting off the supply as a gas company does to your household if you don't pay their bills was no use of a weapon in my opinion.
Well yes that's the surface. In the meantime they have bought off Austrian oil and natural gas companies incl the ex-state company OMV. They were trying to do the same with the hungarian one too. At the same time they succesfully hindering Nabucco etc. This is way more than a simple resource. It is about who controls Europe and the EU is disunited and losing.