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Monday, February 11, 2008

Yanukovych Reflects on His Gas Record



We never had a gas issue. Did you ever hear, in the year and a half of my government’s operation, that these issues were not being resolved? We were reliable partners in Europe, and Europe put her trust in this. I repeated…repeatedly met at various…at various levels with the European leadership, and I heard and I felt that this trust had already existed for Ukraine. We must bring order now — without delay. For if there is unauthorized gas use, somebody has to take responsibility for it. There was no such thing [when I was in power]. I can’t even remember when it ever happened in our country. It’s a shame.

It’s a shame you can’t remember. Aside from the current gas episode, the last time it happened was in early October 2007, right after the not-so-favorable parliamentary elections. Your government was still in business at the time, don't you remember?

For a person who claims to be studying English, but has such a short memory span on issues like gas, NATO, “Better living today,” etc, these wonderful songs might be a great memory refresher:

Whitney Houston “Didn’t We Almost Have It All”
Celine Dion “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now”
Phil Collins “Do You Remember?”
Madonna “I’ll Remember”
Chumbawamba “Amnesia”

Video uploaded from: http://censor.net.ua/go/offer/ResourceID/75860.html

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"According to the Ukrainian PM, Naftogaz had collected $216m from consumers for October 2007, but this money was never transferred to RosUkrEnergo, and not a single document has been located to trace where this money went. A similar scheme was seen in dealing with a $394m debt for November and a $462m debt for December, Timoshenko stressed."

http://www.rbcnews.com/free
/20080211133006.shtml

Luida

Taras said...

This is what you get when you have RosUkrEnergo, UkrGazEnergo plus some energetic folks in Kyiv and Moscow doing things that even Mulder and Scully can’t explain.

Which leads me to believe that the real price paid by the Ukrainian people might be much higher than the nominal one quoted in the “best deals” between these gas matryoshkas.

Regardless of who wins the current gas war, I’m not sold on the multi-tiered intermediary system.

Anonymous said...

Luida

but the pm or her people gave several different versions to explain the debt, including at one point that the gas was never delivered so it's really difficult to tell what happened from her statments

Taras said...

Luida, the more corrupt the system, the more sides to the story.

Most of the time, they're all in this together, but no one takes responsibility. The system we have is an octopus that feeds on the public interest.

Without leaks of insider information, it's hard to make head or tail of many issues.