Silly People Running Ukraine

Russia has cut off gas supplies to Ukraine after a payment deadline passed and negotiators failed to reach a deal with Russia on gas prices and unpaid bills.

Gazprom's spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov said that since Ukraine had not paid for the gas by Monday Moscow, had no legal grounds to carry on supplying it to Ukraine.

However, Kupriyanov added that the supply to Europe was continuing as planned and Ukraine was obliged to make sure gas reached its European customers.

One thing should be obvious to anyone who lives somewhere with neighbors. You don't piss them off in order to make friends with the people in another town.

Secondly. When you depend on that neighbor to say, get to work, you don't piss them off in order to make friends with the people in another town.

How any thinking person in government in Ukraine thought it was a good idea to piss off Russia in order to make friends with the US/EU is beyond me. There are a number of things that Ukraine could have done to not align themselves with either party, but they allowed themselves to be manipulated into a stupid conflict with its neighbor.

Lets be clear; Ukraine is broke. It is not paying Russia's Gazprom. the EU, IMF and whoever else is bailing out the Ukrainian economy (if you want to call it that) is who is paying Gazprom. I'm not entirely clear on how you "negotiate" the payment for services already rendered because you object to the costs of future services. If the costs of future services were of concern, then perhaps the entire debacle that was the coup in Kiev ought to have been considered more carefully.

Back here in the real world, we know that if we fail to pay our bills in full and on time, we get higher rates because we are considered a bad risk. If we want to get better rates, we behave in such a way that shows that we are good for the credit extended to us. It is really that simple. Not paying bills. Allowing embassies to be damaged and having "diplomats" [sic] talk about "Putin is a fucker" is really not how you show that you will make good on payments owed.

Ukraine is fortunate that this event did not happen during winter. This was, of course, on purpose. This gives the EU time to figure out how they will pay for Ukraine's gas needs before the cold comes. We'll see how long it takes for mature folks to take over from the children in the room.