Europe’s gas crisis mounted yesterday as Ukraine prepared to host an energy summit likely to take a hard line against Moscow, while huge swathes of central Europe and the Balkans remained in the cold.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko was expecting “five counterparts from eastern Europe” including Polish President Lech Kaczynski and Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus, Yushchenko’s spokeswoman said late on Thursday.
The Ukrainian leader has accused Russia of trying to seize hold of Ukraine’s pipeline network and of fomenting a domestic revolt against his rule.
Russia has denied this and in turn said Ukraine was blocking Russian gas flows to Europe.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, meanwhile, said Russia was at risk of losing its credibility as an energy supplier ahead of talks yesterday with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in Berlin set to be dominated by the crisis.
With gas stocks running low in many European countries, there have been frantic diplomatic efforts to resolve the current impasse as well as to find alternatives to Russian gas imports from countries such as Algeria and Norway.
The EU depends on Russia for around a quarter of its total gas supplies.
On Thursday, Putin proposed that European energy companies establish a consortium that would pay for the “technical gas” requested by Ukraine in order to be able to pump Russian gas supplies to European consumers.
The proposal came ahead of planned crisis talks between Putin and Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko today in Moscow that EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs was also expected to attend.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has called for a broader summit of gas transit countries and consumer states in Moscow on the same day but the EU has held off on responding to his offer and Ukraine’s president has turned it down.
“The gas war has been recognised as political. The two sides are gathering their allies,” a headline in Russian daily Kommersant said.
“Vladimir Putin is trying to hold the decisive battle in the gas war on his own territory,” Vedomosti said, referring to the Putin-Tymoshenko talks.
The EU presidency has been loath to take sides in a dispute it called “incredible” and has warned of “significant financial, economic and political consequences” for both Russia and Ukraine if they did not resolve it.
After talks with Yushchenko in London on Thursday, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown urged “an urgent resolution to this problem which is causing severe economic and social difficulties,” Brown’s office said.
Gas-fired central heating has been rationed or cut off for millions of people in central Europe and the Balkans and supplies slashed to industry in a crisis that has already cost EU states hundreds of millions of euros.
Russia cut off supplies to Ukraine’s domestic market on New Year’s Day in a payment and prices dispute and then halted deliveries to Europe via Ukraine on Jan. 7, saying Kiev was stealing the gas.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS