Russia seeks over $11b in ‘debt’ from Ukraine: Gazprom.

[okaawhatever]

20. Ukraine has done that. They've attempted a few times, but last year they bought a bunch of gas

from Poland. Poland bought it on the spot market and then reversed the pipelines to send it back to Ukraine. All of that was still cheaper than the "discounted" gas Putin sold them.

If you look at the gas pipelines in the area and how political all of that is, it explains a lot. Ukraine also has a bunch of screwed up laws that hurt the average citizen. For example, you can only charge 1/6th for domestic gas what you can charge for import gas. That is to stop them from developing their own gas fields. Also, in the city of Kiev the heat is a central gas boiler system. There are several boilers in the city. They pump hot water through extensive pipes to each residence. The individual residences don't have thermostats (when they were communist they didn't need them) so the city turns the heat on in September and off in March or April. On warm days, people simply open their windows. Not to mention the boilers and pipes are 50 yrs old and very inefficient. Ukraine uses roughly the same amount of gas as France or Germany and they both have 7 or 8 times the GDP of Ukraine. The gov't of Ukraine then subsidizes 75% of the price of gas. A couple of problems there, first is that the citizens aren't fighting for more efficient heating systems or more fair gas prices because they aren't really paying for it. It has led to huge budget deficits, but it's not the same as paying out each month. Second, the majority of the subsidies go to business and those with higher incomes. One of the good things about Ukraine is that getting the budget under control won't be hard once they get their energy under control. They will have to find a way to import gas from other areas, and they will have to update their infrastructure to make themselves energy efficient but can you imagine how little money we'd have in the US if we had to pay 7 or 8 times for energy that we pay now?