Ukraine (closed; covers till August 2014)

[Firn]

So, there is no evidence which could possibly change your belief into "pro-Ukranian Crimea" and any piece of infirmation you stumble upon would just reinforce it? Confirmation bias as it is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

I'm very aware of that sort of bias, this is why I generally go first for the facts before I comment and use to cast a very wide net, from Moskva to Washington in four languages. But please, if you have anything intelligent and meaningful to add, make your case by good, even some arguments. So far I have waited in vain...

[Firn]

Ukraine has the lowest energy efficiency worldwide a short paper claims:

Summary:
Ukraine has the lowest energy efficiency worldwide. While the industry sector is slowly going to improve, the communal services are still very inefficient and demand side management is not seriously taken into account yet. Reforms on the national level are slow, implementation and control is poor. Tariffs do not cover the real costs and with rising gas prices the subventions are growing on national and communal level. The biggest pressure is exerted on cities to quickly react on the challenges but there is a lack of knowledge, management capacity and financing capability. A German-Ukrainian technical assistance project implemented by GTZ will assist the
national Government and four pilot cities to develop implementation strategies for energy saving in the building sector in an international interdisciplinary team. Together with the Association of Energy Efficient Cities in Ukraine a learning city network will be established for knowledge exchange and dissemination of achievements.

Now a Russian might obviously see that cooperation as a cunning strategic move by a US proxy to undermine the economic relationship between the brother nations of Ukraine and Russia.

Many changes have happened in Ukraine since soviet economy and relevant ideology collapsed in 1991. However, the supply side oriented mentality fed for a long time by an artificial economy and created an according lifestyle taking no care on energy consumption is still alive in this country. While the industrial sector is slowly reducing its energy consumption and becoming more energy efficient, the communal services, predominantly heating, are still very inefficient. Outdated systems in poor condition and high losses due to insufficient maintenance as well as no possibility for heat adjustment are the main reasons for the bad performance.

On a more serious note it the results of those bad incentives set up by the high subventions, rooted partly in the SU, have been quite obvious and terrible. We discussed something similar concerning the situation in Saudi Arabia in the energy security thread. There is no doubt at all that those subventions have to come down a great deal in the long run but one has to be careful to avoid a big fallout in the short term. A far more energy efficient economy should considerably reduce the economic leverage of the Kremlin over Ukraine even if demand goes up overall due to economic development.

This presentation is quite interesting as it contains a lot of relatively recent data in sometimes great graphs about the current energy situation. Most projectations are for now best ignored.

PS: I just realized that it is a .fi address. Shocking, now even the Finns (in this case one of the Swedish minority), are in the subversing business united with Ukrainian elements.