The worst that can happen to Ukraine is they will have to pay the going rate for gas like everyone else. Russia can't afford to turn away a paying customer. It has to buy potatoes from... Israel.

(according to a BBC report on Israeli irrigation troubles last night)

There is a lot of natural gas in Gazan territorial waters.

Control of energy resources has always been an overriding goal of the Jewish political economic oligarchs that bankroll the Zionist Virtual Colonial Motherland. (See Petroleum: Driving Force in Zionism.)

War and Natural Gas: The Israeli Invasion and Gaza's Offshore Gas Fields discusses the connection between that Zionist attack on Gaza and Gaza resources.

The possibility of stealing offshore natural gas from Palestinians, who might benefit from selling it to Europe, has almost certainly played a major role in the Zionist decision to ravage Gaza.

I discuss my run-in with Zionist greed and rapaciousness in Joachim Martillo used to do business in Israel. Now he supports Divestment.

Stephen your assertion:

"As long as the rest of the EU is toasty warm in winter, they aren't going to care much about conditions in Kiev."

doesn't fit to SATFP's axioms about "Balance of Threat".
Unless of course you put those axioms solely for the US FP. I mean you can't say:

"As long as the rest of the EU is toasty warm in winter, the US isn't going to care much about conditions in Kiev."

could you?
if you could then I retrieve my above sentence realizing that Kiew is not an important element in Balance of Threat in that region. So, why would you be idling with Kiew here?

remember the theory:

Salvare Apparentias Theory of FP (SATFP).

1. There exist states. (Not ThorsProvoni's "states" yet)

2. A State composed of a nation, a national leadership, national interests and power (economic, military, population, land, etc? ..(any others? pls feel free to add).(Laws??!! perhaps?! naaaa! it wouldn't matter much for they would all put the signature under the prototype one for all constitution anyway;->)

3. There exists a competitive arena where states acts as they do.

4. There exists no central authority in that arena that can enforce moral or legal constraints.

5. States commit morally dubious acts (dubious according to what? The Blog knows) (see axiom 1)(Why this is here? Didn't the Blog declare that SATFP is essencially amoral?)

6. A State's foreign and defense policy reflects national interest of the state.

7. A State seeks to increase her national interests when her existence is threatened.

8. A State's power is a potential threat to other states. A state is by definition paranoid of other states.

9. Truth and reality behind the phenomena is a threat for National Interests of the States. (J.Thomas)

10. Salvare Apparentias Foreign Policy is the art of keeping the threats of states in Balance besides saving the foreing policy related phenomena. (How? By shuffling and mixing nations/races/cultures?!, subjecting them to prototype secularo-fascist laws to reduce their multiplicity to singularity? the Blog knows).

Grand Sen~or

Note: When I ask a quwation, I don't necessarily expect an answer to it and most of the time a non-answer is an answer enough for me;->>In fact I insert questions as an act in language, regardless of their being answered or not. In that sense an answer is also an act in language perhaps to effect the course of the question. But a non-answer implicitely let the act of the question take its course, without any resistence;->
In other words most of the questions I insert here are not targeted to persons or groups but to language itself. I am interacting with the language here.So, please don't take my questions personally or grouply;->

There is that possibility, but more likely what will happen is that once the direct pipelines are built, Ukraine will have to stop stealing gas from the pipelines and storage facilities in Ukraine for Gazprom. They've been doing that continuously since the end of the Cold War, which is why this problem keeps popping up.

Which is why it was so smart for the Russians to co-opt Schroder, who is the major force behind building the underseas pipeline that will bypass Ukraine and Poland. Once that happens, Russia can go full-force into using its gas to force regime change in Ukraine, which of course is what this is all about. This is just the opening shot: Ukraine is already on its knees economically, only being held afloat by an IMF loan, and now Russia is trying to get it to pay double what the rest of Europe will be paying in six months when the oil price crash sets in (the price for nat gas in Europe usually trails oil prices by about six months); the option being that Ukraine return to Russia's orbit of influence and get back to its low priced gas.

Agricultural specialists in Russia and Ukraine have long recommended that sunflowers not be planted more than once in the same field every seven to ten years, chiefly to prevent damage ... to their deep root systems. Due to the high profitability of sunflowerseed, however, many farmers have elected not to observe traditional crop rotations, and sunflower area has expanded to roughly twice the recommended level

The Agency wrote to organisations representing suppliers and importers of cooking oils in May to alert them to the presence in the UK of sunflower oil containing mineral oil. The oil originated in Ukraine. Since then the European Commission has imposed a temporary ban on all imports of sunflower oil from Ukraine

Sunflower production seems to be a good guide.

Professor Walt, maybe your point is valid in the very long term (>20 years); but for the foreseeable future, Russia will remain very dependent on transit through Ukraine. Construction of the Nord Stream pipeline will reduce this dependence significantly, but having 60% of Russian export gas going through Ukraine (down from 80%; these are rough numbers) is still dependence. And the next step in Russia's plan to get away from dependence on Ukraine -- the South Stream pipeline to Bulgaria -- is dead for the time being due to lack of finance, and maybe now Bulgarian pique over being frozen for the past two weeks (for which they are blaming Russia).

I wonder why so called realists always want to kow-tow to Russia? A fading power if there ever was one. On the other hand they also want to refuse to treat India, Ukraine or Poland as countries meriting some repsect is beyond the realm of the possible.

Is it anything more than the normal, middle-aged or elderly man's grumpiness and scepticism towards change (which mainly has to do with sinking hormone levels)? Russia used to be the second most important country - so it must always be treated as it used to be - while the bnest way forward also for Russia (at least the Russians as opposed to the state) is to accept a more modest role.

In other words, is there anything except a lonign for the past and the criticism of everythig not alread known in realism?