NewsX World: Russia halts gas supply to Ukraine

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On this second day of the New Year, Russians are vacationing or watching the classic Soviet movies running on state television, if they are not taking the kids to see the just released blockbuster film Bogatyri, about fabled Russian heroes of yore in which all the latest Western action movie cinematic tricks are deployed.

That is to say all Russians are relaxing except those on the battlefields of the Special Military Operation. As for the soldiers, they continued their advances on the line of confrontation, taking the important logistical hub of Kurakhovo in the Donetsk republic after a couple of months of slowly pummeling the city with artillery and bombs.

However, Russia made news in our Western media today for reasons having nothing to do with the battlefield. It was rather due to the shutdown after midnight on the 1st of their gas deliveries to Ukrainian pipelines, which no longer were providing transit to Western Europe now that the 5 year contract between Russia and Ukraine had expired. In effect, Russia’s annual sales of 6.5 billion dollars of gas to its customers in Central Europe via the Ukrainian gas system came to an end. 

Zelensky claimed that this shutdown represented a major defeat for Russia. Whether that corresponds to reality was the subject of this brief panel discussion on News X, a program on India’s English language broadcaster ITV.

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

NewsX World: Russland stoppt Gaslieferungen an die Ukraine

Am zweiten Tag des neuen Jahres machen die Russen Urlaub oder schauen sich die sowjetischen Filmklassiker im staatlichen Fernsehen an, wenn sie nicht gerade mit ihren Kindern den gerade erschienenen Blockbuster „Bogatyri“ („Bogatyr“) über die sagenumwobenen russischen Helden von einst anschauen, in dem alle neuesten filmischen Tricks der westlichen Actionfilme zum Einsatz kommen.

Das heißt, alle Russen entspannen sich, außer denen auf den Schlachtfeldern der militärischen Spezialoperation. Die Soldaten setzten ihren Vormarsch an der Konfrontationslinie fort und eroberten nach einigen Monaten, in denen sie die Stadt langsam mit Artillerie und Bomben beschossen hatten, das wichtige Logistikzentrum Kurakhovo in der Republik Donezk.

Russland machte jedoch heute in unseren westlichen Medien aus Gründen Schlagzeilen, die nichts mit dem Schlachtfeld zu tun haben. Es lag vielmehr an der Einstellung der Gaslieferungen in die ukrainischen Pipelines nach Mitternacht am 1. Januar, die nun, da der Fünfjahresvertrag zwischen Russland und der Ukraine ausgelaufen war, keinen Transit mehr nach Westeuropa ermöglichen. Damit endet Russlands jährlicher Verkauf von 6,5 Milliarden Dollar Gas an seine Kunden in Mitteleuropa über das ukrainische Gassystem.

Zelensky behauptete, dass diese Abschaltung eine große Niederlage für Russland darstelle. Ob dies der Realität entspricht, war Gegenstand dieser kurzen Podiumsdiskussion auf News X, einer Sendung des englischsprachigen indischen Senders ITV.

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Published by gilbertdoctorow

Gilbert Doctorow's latest book, "War Diaries. The Russia-Ukraine War, 2022-2023" is a unique contribution to literature on the war thanks to the author's reports on the Russian home front written during his periodic visits to St Petersburg at a time when Russia no longer issued visas and nearly all Western journalists had left the country. Doctorow's two-volume "Memoirs of a Russianist" published in 2020 also constitutes a category of its own, consisting largely of diary entries rather than reminiscences written decades later.. Volume 2 focuses on the community of 50,000 expatriate managers working and living in Moscow during the 1990s, about which none of his peers has yet to write. Gilbert Doctorow is a professional Russia watcher and actor in Russian affairs going back to 1965. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College (1967), a past Fulbright scholar, and holder of a Ph.D. with honors in history from Columbia University (1975). After completing his studies, Mr. Doctorow pursued a business career focused on the USSR and Eastern Europe. For twenty-five years he worked for US and European multinationals in marketing and general management with regional responsibility. From 1998-2002, Doctorow served as the Chairman of the Russian Booker Literary Prize in Moscow. During the 2010-2011 academic year, he was a Visiting scholar of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University. Mr. Doctorow is a long-time resident of Brussels.

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