The
Real History Behind Ukraine, Putin, the EU, Gas, & Donbass
Eric Zuesse, February 25, 2022
Russia’s long-predicted invasion of Ukraine finally
happened, but the reasons for it are widely misrepresented. Basic history is
necessary in order to understand it.
The Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline, from Russia,
under the Baltic Sea, to Germany, was planned in
order to enable greatly increased sales-volume of the lowest-cost natural gas,
which came from Russia, into the EU, without having to rely upon the irregular pipelined supplies through
the unstable and unpredictable nation of Ukraine. In fact, the
planning-document noted on its page 12 that “Import of Russian natural gas to Europe takes place through
three main routes, whereof 80% of the gas is in transit through the
Ukraine.” They didn’t need to say that that was unstable;
everyone knew it was; so, diplomatically speaking, this unfortunate fact about
Ukraine wasn’t mentioned by them in the document, though the fact was a
crucial reason for the Nord Stream project, which would
transmit gas directly from Russia to Germany, no longer through unstable
Ukraine.
On 8 November 2011, the BBC headlined “Nord Stream gas pipeline opened by
Merkel and Medvedev”, and Russia’s RIA
Novosty presented this
happy photo of the
signing-ceremony:
From left to right, Gerhard Schroder had
been Germany’s Chancellor; Francois Fillon had been France’s
Prime Minister; Johannes Teyssen was the CEO of multinational
German electrical utility E.ON; Angela Merkel was Germany’s
Chancellor; Mark Rutte was Prime Minister of
Netherlands; Dmitry Medvedev was Prime Minister of
Russia; Alexey Miller was Chairman of Russia’s Gazprom; Guenter
Oettinger was the European Commission’s V.P. in charge of
Energy; Kurt Bock was CEO of Germany’s BASF; and Erwin
Sellering was Germany’s Minister President of
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
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