Room 12A: White Hunter, Black Heart

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White Hunter, Black Heart

December 14, 2005 08:09 AM

Leave it to the Germans to set a new standard for cynicism. Gerhard Schroeder, failed former chancellor, America-baiting demagogue, terrorist appeasor and all-round gasbag has now surrendered his lone remaining virtue: At least he wasn't one of Vladimir Putin's stooges. In case you haven't been following affairs here in the former Soviet Bloc, the Russian leader has been threatening to force Ukraine to pay market rates for oil and gas from its Eastern neighbor. Fair enough. But this would, according to most reports, triple the price of petrol here overnight. When the price spikes, ordinary Ukrainians will be the ones to suffer, and scores of people in this desperately poor country will die. Putin, of course, knows this. Which is why he's been using Russia's supplier role to put the screws into Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko, who insists on building relations with the West. (No similar pressure has been put on Lukashenko's regime in Belarus, which buys its gas at the same rate as Ukraine.) The one card Yushchenko has had to play in all this is the fact that Ukraine could block Russia's shipments of oil westward -- 80 percent of Russia's gas exports pass through Ukraine via pipelines. This would hurt both countries but, well, there you have it.

Enter plucky Gerhard. Few understood the logic when the former chancellor spent so much political capital on backing an oil pipeline through the Baltic Sea from Russia. Oh, yes, there were claims that the pipeline would bolster supply guarantees for Germany. But the plan's only logical basis was to put the squeeze on Eastern European countries -- Ukraine in particular -- that were gravitating away from Russia and toward the West. And Germany, one of the West's anchor economies, could not want that, right? Well, no one calculated that Schroeder's interests were somewhat different than Germany's. They know now: Last week, Schroeder signed on to work for Gazprom, the Russian gas giant that is essentially controlled by the Russian government. The company believes it's high time Ukraine paid the market rate for its gas shipments. Last week, Putin publicly concurred. Does anyone need to ask Schroeder for his opinion?

P.S. As this Washington Post editorial page points out, the more you know about the details of Schroeder's arrangement, the more sordid this tale becomes....

Ukraine

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