![Natural Gas Deal Underscores Russia–EU Convergence Natural Gas Deal Underscores Russia–EU Convergence](https://thenewamerican.com/assets/sites/2/_img/34061/a517c358289186f01728874198cb93a3-720x480.jpg)
On October 30, 2014, after months of reportedly “intense negotiations,” Ukrainian and Russian officials agreed to a “short-term” gas deal that will carry both the European Union and Ukraine through the winter with Russian-supplied natural gas, as fighting continues in Ukraine’s east.
Under the terms of the agreement, Ukraine will pay Russia $3.1 billion as part of its debt to Russia’s state-owned gas company Gazprom, and make an additional upfront payment of $1.5 billion for about 3.9 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas for November and December.
Ukraine will now pay Gazprom $385 per thousand cubic meters, or 38.5¢ per cubic meter, in November and December. Russia agreed to sell Ukraine natural gas at a reduced rate of $365 per thousand cubic meters from January through March 2015, ensuring that both Ukraine and the EU are not left in the cold this winter. In 2013, 39 percent of the EU’s natural gas was imported from Russia. More accurately, however, it is not “Ukraine” that will be paying these bills. As we have reported (see links at end of the article), it is the taxpayers of the United States and the European Union who will actually be footing most of the bill via the $27 billion IMF/EU aid package approved in April. And, according to IMF boss Christine Lagarde, another $19 billion may be needed after that. It is little wonder then that Vladimir Putin is making such “reasonable” statements and offers of leniency toward Kiev; the Ukrainian aid amounts to a multi-billion dollar transfer from the West to the Kremlin’s coffers.
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There is “no reason for people in Europe to stay cold this winter,” European Commission President José Manuel Barroso declared at a news conference. Barroso, an “ex”-Maoist and former leader in the PCTP/MRPP (Communist Party of the Portuguese Workers/Revolutionary Movement of the Portuguese Proletariat), further asserted that Ukraine and Russia should “act as reliable partners.”
A statement issued by Gazprom spokesperson Sergey Kupriyanov said: “This is hopefully the start of a new, more constructive chapter in gas relations among the EU, Russia and Ukraine.”
Following the purported collapse of communism and disintegration of the Soviet Union, Gazprom quickly became an “ex”-KGB operated state-owned enterprise. According to a 2009 article from the Global Post, “Nearly a dozen of top Gazprom managers served in the KGB or its main successor agency, the FSB, including its deputy chairman, Valery Golubyov.” The official biography of Golubyov (alternatively spelled Golubev) on Gazprom’s website lists 1979 to 1991 as the years of his “service in the USSR KGB.”
Ukraine’s natural gas and oil company, Naftogaz, is also a state-owned enterprise, operated and managed by the Ministry of Fuel and Energy of Ukraine, which succeeded the Ministry of Energetics and Electrification of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (URSR). Naftogaz was founded in 1998 during the reign of Ukraine President Leonid Kuchma, who incidentally was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from 1960 to 1991. The fact that both countries were able to come to an agreement ensuring European access and continued dependency on Russian natural gas underscores the reality that the outward conflict between Russia and the European-backed Ukraine is a façade for East-West convergence. Just as the EU’s 2004 expansion into Poland, a former Soviet-dominated territory, has been used as a model to merge a former Eastern Bloc country with the West, Ukraine’s membership in the EU is designed to facilitate the eventual convergence of Russia with the West.
On page 150 of his book Strategic Vision: America and Crisis of Global Power, Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, wrote:
A systematically nurtured closer relationship between Russia and the Atlantic West (economically with the EU, and in security matters with NATO and with the United States more generally) could be hastened by gradual Russian acceptance of a truly independent Ukraine, which desires more urgently than Russia to be close to Europe and eventually to be a member of the European Union. Hence the EU was wise in November 2010 to grant Ukraine access to its programs, pointing toward a formal association agreement in 2011. A Ukraine not hostile to Russia but somewhat ahead of it in its access to the West actually helps to encourage Russia’s movement Westward toward a potentially rewarding European future.
On page 187, Brzezinski stated:
Poland, moreover, could then play not only a critical role in opening the doors of Europe to Russia but also in encouraging Ukraine and Belarus to move in the same direction on their own, thus increasing Russia’s interests in doing likewise.
He further elaborated, “The desirable historical process of enlarging the West thus has to be strategically guided and solidly grounded.”
Western insiders (internationalists such as Brzezinski) are not the only ones suggesting the future integration of Europe and Russia. On November 26, 2010, while speaking at a conference in Germany, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, “Can it be supposed that one day Russia will be in some joint currency zone with Europe? Yes, quite possible.”
Regional integration agreements and partnerships — such as the continued eastward expansion of both the European Union and NATO and the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the EU and the United States — are foisted upon the people of Europe and sold to the American public by the insiders as the only way to prevent war. The fear of unilateral Russian domination of the West is fueling the current drive toward U.S.-EU merger with Russia’s tyrants. Neither is a choice. Whether totalitarian Russian conquest or East-West convergence prevails, freedom loses.
Anti-communists know better than to support the EU’s bid for Ukrainian membership in the Eurozone. Europe’s victory would taste as bitter as defeat. When the smoke finally settles. the European Parliament will likely find itself staked with an influx of communists from the former Soviet republic of Ukraine, along with their leftist “ex”-communist fellow travelers in Europe who already occupy much of the EU’s current leadership.
These strategic plans were all predicted as far back as 1984 by former KGB agent Anatoliy Golitsyn, who defected to the West in 1961. Prior to his defection, Golitsyn served in the KGB’s ultra-secretive Department D, which was responsible for developing long-range disinformation strategies, and was subordinate only to the Central Committee of the Communist Party. In this post he was “given access to the executive branches of government and to departments of the Central Committee to enable [him] to prepare and carry out operations that required the approval or support of the party leadership,” according to Golitsyn. On pages 340-341 of his book New Lies For Old (1984), Golitsyn wrote:
A broader-scale “liberalization” in the Soviet Union and elsewhere would have an even more profound effect. Eurocommunism could be revived. The pressure for united fronts between communist and socialist parties and trade unions at national and international level would be intensified. This time, the socialists might finally fall into the trap. United front governments under strong communist influence might well come to power in France, Italy, and possibly other countries. Elsewhere the fortunes and influence of communist parties would be much revived. The bulk of Europe might well turn to left-wing socialism, leaving only a few pockets of conservative resistance.
Pressure could well grow for a solution of the German problem in which some form of confederation between East and West Germany would be combined with neutralization of the whole and a treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union.
Ukraine’s admission into the EU would greatly expand the size of the European Parliament with seats, at least half of which would likely go to the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) and the pro-Russia “Party of Regions.” This would increasingly expedite the neutralization of Europe, wedging it further away from the United States and drawing it into Moscow’s orbit, as Golitsyn predicted. Ukraine’s membership in the EU will not westernize Ukraine; it will easternize Europe.
Gorbachev’s prediction of the EU being “the new European Soviet” will then finally be realized, and not a single shot will have been fired.
Related articles:
Putin’s East vs. Globalist West: Merging Into a New World Order
Funneling Ukraine Bailout to Putin, Wall Street
U.S. Taxpayers Funding Putin via IMF Bailout of Ukraine
Ukraine: Globalists Hijack Crisis for More Money, Power for IMF