Inside News on Odessa and Ukraine
I will immediately steer clear of the Transparency International Corruption Perception Index 2012, which unsurprisingly ranks Ukraine at 144th and perceived as corrupt, simply because that will grab the mainstream headlines. Ukraine still perceived as corrupt shocker - blah blah blah - not news at all! Instead I will bring to your attention the 2012 […]
Although I studied economics as part of a degree in Business Management and Finance many moons ago, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that it was not exactly the most interesting of subjects, and one in which I had to motivate myself to maintain a respectable overall end grade. The fact it […]
No, no, no. Whilst we are still waiting for an eventual final election count for all constituency seats and then a decision by the opposition whether to accept the elections results or not some 8 days after polling day, that is not what I am referring to - though it would make a cynical tweet […]
Well it seems that attempted assassinations of Russians and Chechens in London are making the news over in Blighty. Not so long ago I wrote about the attempted assassination of German Gorbuntsov at Canary Wharf and now it seems MI5 are struggling to remove a Chechen of extremely dubious and nefarious background from London, who they […]
Quite unsurprisingly, with the EU, IMF and “the West” in general suffering from a bout of Ukraine fatigue not seen since the Yushenko/Tymoshenko years, and with Ukraine tied to a ruinous gas deal signed during those years, Russia with a Presidential election next month, is piling on the pressure and rhetoric at Kyiv. Back in […]
For once Ukraine maybe well served by having the current hard-nosed power vertical of the Party of Regions in power. Why? In the past week, Italy, Poland, Austria, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia have all noticed large drops in the supply of gas from Russia. Needless to say these drops have occurred […]
Remember this post I wrote from a few days ago? This reads rather well now and something of a prophesy: “If Russia was to turn off the taps, the EU, which has done all it can to stay outside this contractual squabble would then be sucked in. The options for the EU would be to […]
There is a possibility that the Ukrainian budget will not be met already. The reason as always is gas and Russia. It is already acknowledged by the government themselves that the budget is ambitious when it comes to the budget cutting. Now the authorities state that they will cope in 2012 and cite the budget […]
It seems to be going horribly wrong for Ukraine regarding gas supplies from Russia. Russia and Turkey have reached agreement over the South Stream pipeline traveling through Turkish waters, a matter that was the only thing preventing its going ahead. With Nord Stream on line already, pumping Russian gas directly to Germany and bypassing Ukraine, […]
Well the death of the Nabucco pipeline seems to have finally arrived as I (and many others) have predicted years ago. It was, of course, doomed to failure from the outset, not because of the idea or reasoning behind it both of which are sound, but because of the parties involved and the geopolitics. Unsurprisingly, […]