The energy situation in Ukraine has been precarious for years -- going back long before the separatist rebellion in the country's east, and the loss of Crimea to Russian military action. The crisis now stands to get much worse.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk recently said his country will face one of two scenarios during the upcoming winter: "The First is bad. The second is very bad."
Yatseyuk's pessimistic prognostication is due mostly to an inadequate supply of coal, his nation's main energy source. At this point, it looks like Kiev does not have enough money to buy the 7 million tons of coal needed to provide heat to its citizens -- the Ukrainian government needs $500 million. If the winter turns really cold -- the "very bad" scenario -- $900 million will be needed in order to purchase 11 million tons of coal. That is a lot of money for an already cash-strapped Kiev, and with reserves shrinking, Ukrainian power stations are stopping operations.
To make matters worse, coal is plentiful in the Donbas, and thus under the control of the secessionist Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics (DNR and LNR). According to the Russian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda, Kiev is currently negotiating coal purchases with Luhansk separatists, as well as with Russia. The progress of negotiations, given the state of belligerence between the parties, is still unclear. Donbas coal and energy reserves have been crucial in the past, and not only for Ukraine. In the waning days of the Soviet Union, striking coal miners shut down most energy production in the region and nearly paralyzed an already fragile Soviet economy, prompting then-President Mikhail Gorbachev to grant miners' demands for better pay and working conditions.
According to official Russian government sources, energy does play an important part in the ongoing conflict between the Kiev government and the Moscow-backed DNR/LNR separatists -- and not, as many Ukrainians have said repeatedly over the past two years, their aspirations for a more responsive and less corrupt government and society. Almost a year ago, as the conflict in Eastern Ukraine began to intensify, Frantz Klintzevich, the vice chairman of the Russian Parliament's Defense Committee, during an interview with Russian daily Izvestia said that the end game is shale gas deposits in Donbas:
"[T]here are considerable reserves of shale gas in Luhansk and Donetsk, exceeding our Siberian reserves by a wide margin," he said. "Getting to it is still environmentally harmful. The West is sending a small number of people and military advisers in order to gain control on the ground. The border is now created precisely to keep out others when other processes will start" -- presumably he was referring to energy-related processes. "There is a cleaning process afoot in order to create a springboard for the extraction of shale gas, to create a buffer zone.
Like his fellow Russian government officials, Klintzevich did not hesitate to cite history in order to portray Ukraine in a negative light: "Hitler once said ‘We do not care about the Soviet Union, our main goal is the Donbas.'"
Klintzevich wanted to convince readers that Moscow has no hand in what is happening in Ukraine and has no intention of getting involved. He portrayed Russia's actions as defensive in nature, even if his statements appeared bizarre and out of sync with reality:
"[E]verything connected with Novorossya is very important for America," he said, adding that the land "is needed as a springboard that will host high-precision weapons capable of bringing Russia to its knees. They don't say it out loud, but that is why today there is a cleansing of local populations." Giving further details of what he thought NATO wanted there, he went on to say that "NATO's plans correspond to what is taking place there -- destabilize the situation and the economy, and create a large number of refugees in Russia who may number 7-10 million people, which will also create internal tensions. In Ukraine, there was another problem: It wasn't just 3,463 who died in the fighting - in fact, more than 31,000 lost their lives."
Commenting further, the Russian minister said:
"According to the Ukrainian leadership, Kiev is preparing to resist Russian aggression. They do not know the most important secret: Russia has no plans and is not ready to carry out military aggression against Ukraine. But we warn that we will inflict a serious and adequate blow if there is a threat to the citizens of the Russian Federation and our territories."
Currently, official news outlets are reporting on the presence of Russian special forces in eastern Ukraine and on the appearance of Russian forward-operating military bases inside disputed territory in the east. So much for not getting involved.
(AP photo)
