Watch the other guy's WTFace.
Yanukovych: Strategic cooperation, trade and economic cooperation between Ukraine and Kazakhstan...is a matter of mutual interest.
Red Card for Rudkovsky
Transportation Minister Probed for Turkmenbashi 2-Bashing
Minister Mykola Rudkovsky, SPU, one of the founding fathers of the Anticrisis Coalition, stands accused of running a travel agency on the side. Las month, the agency sparked a diplomatic scandal between Kyiv and Ashabad when it hosted exiled Turkmen opposition leaders, or so they presented themselves.
In the middle of the night, Minister Rudkovsky called Ukrainian missions in Vienna and Varna, urging that visas be granted to the Turkmen by 5 am. The decision had been approved in the upper levels of government, he added.
What followed was a vain voyage of two former high-ranking Turkmen officials, Khudaiberdy Orazov and Nur-Mukhammed Hannamov, ex-Vice Premier and ex-Ambassador to Turkey, respectively. Their value offering: better access to Turkmen gas wells in exchange for some sort of support.
It’s no secret that experts see no challenger to Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, the heir apparent to the recently deceased Turkmenbashi. Therefore, the easy question is, what was Rudkovsky’s interest in all this and was it worth it? The tough one is, were those opposition guys the real McCoy and, if so, what matters more to Ukraine — taking care of number one or babysitting democracies yet to be born?
Whatever the answers, once the exiles showed up in Kyiv, the Turkmen Embassy lodged a sulfurous note of protest, informing the Ukrainian authorities that warrants for their arrest had been issued by Interpol.
After the visitors safely sneaked out of Ukraine, the scandal seemed to have died quietly. Until a Saturday piece in ZN shed light on the story. The article states that Rudkovsky’s travel business has incited the wrath of Yanukovych.
Rudkovsky is suing the author for defamation. He considers himself to be the target of a smear campaign of reprisals orchestrated by his former business partners, some of whom have found employment in the Secretariat of the President. He claims it all began with his bold decision to remove a score of state-owned enterprises from the privatization list.
The SBU and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have launched separate probes. Both the Ukrainian Ambassador in Vienna and the Consul General in Varna have been relieved of their duties for issuing visas in violation of procedure. Apparently, the spasmodic turf wars so symptomatic of our government’s chronic gold/gas rush have acquired a Turkmen dimension.
Turkmenbashi Meets His Maker
Saparmurat "Father of the Turkmen" Niyazov, 66, the semi-godlike leader of the gas-rich Turkmenistan, passed away last night, Reuters reports.
His sudden death after twenty years of rule over the Central Asian former Soviet Union republic reduces the cadre of Gorbachev-era Genghis Khans down to two, Islom Karimov of Uzbekistan and Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan. It leaves the bereaved country with a grotesque personality cult that rivals Stalin’s.
The late President-for-life Niyazov can be rightfully considered a 21st-century embodiment of Big Brother.
Turkmenbashi, whose highfalutin self-title has made him political shorthand for authoritarianism, followed his subjects almost everywhere. He followed them on the streets and in facilities that bear his name; in parks and squares that exhibit his statues; in pockets full of — or rather, not-so-full-of — manat, the Turkmen national currency that glorifies his face. In fact, the Turkmen may not be the only people he pursued in this universe. A meteorite named after him may well be carrying some sort of ambassadorial aura to extraterrestrial civilizations.
Back on earth, Turkmenbashi’s communication strategy reached way beyond his realm. With “Ruhnama,” an ultra-Leviathan farrago of folklore and philosophy, Niyazov took a dive into the global book business. Thanks to a steady stream of gas revenues, this supposedly ghostwritten masterpiece has been translated into 30 languages. What a way to spend money!
“Ruhnama,” a must-read for the pubescent Machiavellis of the world, comes as a red-blooded addition to the “Despot Dreamers” library of such works as Mao Zedong’s “Little Red Book,” Kim Il-Sung’s “Juche,” and Kuchma’s “Ukraine Is Not Russia.” Sascha Baron Cohen should be gnashing his teeth for picking the wrong country.
Niyazov walked out of this life having secured a higher rate for gas exports to Russia. Starting next year, Russia will shell out $100 per 1000 cubic meters, up from $60.
A tight and highly profitable web of interrelationships characterizes Eurasian politics. Through the Russian pipeline, Turkmenistan supplies most of the gas consumed in Ukraine. Russia, in turn, exports its own gas to Europe through the Ukrainian pipeline, while importing cheaper gas from Turkmenistan to cover domestic demand.
Questions abound: Will Vlad the Impaler manage to drill his proboscis into a demoralized gas kingdom? What’s in the pipeline for Ukraine? How will Turkmenbashi’s death affect Europe’s energy equation? Hopefully, one day the people of Turkmenistan will wake up and put their idols where they belong.
