Ukraine, Russia, EU agree to natural gas supply deal

USD is now worth 43 Rubles. Used to be worth 27 Rubles.

that's a massive increase in the worth of the USD vs the Ruble.

its simple logic.

 

​

 

I try to see the story behind "the story", because nearly everything we're told, by all sides, is spun, exaggerated, and manipulated for political advantage. It doesn't require any special talent to see how well Vladsky has played every portion of every challenge (and opportunity) he confronted in 2014.

Putin started out with an internationalist bankers' coup throwing out the democratically-elected President of Ukraine, which threatened Russia's network of energy pipelines to Western Europe, and, its strategically vital Black Sea naval base in Crimea. Within six months he had secured Crimea and stopped the Kiev-based, pro-IMF faction under Pororshenko from exterminating the ethnic Russian people in Eastern and Southern Ukraine.

Now, four months later, he has negotiated a virtual surrender from Poroshenko/Kiev, and the IMF and the EU's European Central Bank will have to pay Russia the money it was being cheated out of by Ukraine! Moreover, Europe (especially Germany) has cast a "silent vote" in favor of Russia -- if only because they dearly need the energy provided by Russia at a good price to them!

And all this bull**** about probable "war" in Europe has turned out to be utter crap! I would love to watch a video clip of someone explaining how NATO could be motivated to get into a shooting war over Russia protecting Russians and vital Russian interests in a portion of their backyard which was a PART of Russia since 1783. Is there really anybody out there who thinks that the Germans are in the mood for trying another "Stalingrad"...?!

Anyway, the list of Putin's accomplishments this year is long, and getting longer. He's put together strategic business and military alliances all over Asia, and the way he suckered the U. S. back into supporting Iraq was masterful! All he had to do was send a few aging military aircraft and some technicians into Baghdad to help the Shi'a government fight ISIS and *WOW!" -- here comes the United States barging back in, with airstrikes against the Sunni ISIS, and promises of this and that, and what amounts to more unending support for the very Shi'a-dominated government that both Iran and Russia want to see in place. And what does this cost Russia? Not a ****ing penny!

Meanwhile, Russia keeps its navy base at Tartus, Syria, and Putin continues his steady buildup and modernization of Russia's armed forces. But some in this Forum will tell you he's stupid, and is leading Russia to ruin. We in the United States would be lucky to have someone so "stupid" and bent on "ruin" as Putin is for our president....

 

Bravo! Your logic is impeccable!
I also like to see how Putin solves difficult political task. Its hard to predict. And sometimes it seems that a little more and Putin - end ... But he makes an unexpected decision - and wins. And only then You can see elegant logic of his decision.

 

I keep on giving to the "Lord of the Kremlin" the nickname of

Vladimir the Smart

and I keep on thinking that on the other side of the ocean there is "Obama the Naive".

But a part this matter of definitions, leaving for a moment the general competition with Russia of these last months, it's evident that our good friend Vladimir Vladimirovic has played his cards with accuracy driving the crisis to the point he had planned. A point when [with the election in Eastern Ukraine] it has become clear that what EU thought was a kind of minimum target for the Russian leadership, actually was a brick in a wall they were building to carry Europeans to a point of no return. Agreement or agreement.

Now I begin to suspect that the sacrifice of Crimea was exactly what Putin expected, since the beginning.

 

Capacity would be cut and regulators would have to be installed to up pressures but note as this map indicates that they could cut the pipes going into Ukraine and still maintain a two-way feed from the Nord Stream, Blue Stream and South Stream pipelines. All pipelines are tied in at one point or another and capping the lines at the Uke/Rus border and bagging and capping back flow into Ukraine from the west would not stop them from supplying every country that they now supply. After working for TCO (Col Gas) for 25 years I appreciate the brilliance of this pipeline system.
http://www.eegas.com/fsu.htm

 

Since a former chancellor of Germany became a manager in a society controlled by Gazprom, it became evident that Germany was [and is, despite Frau Merkel's declarations] a false competitor of Russia in East Europe.

Perhaps we could remind an other notorious pact between Germany and Russia [but that time it was about Poland], well, this time it's a kind of not written gentleman agreement about the whole Eastern Europe. Germany, in my opinion, is playing a bit odd, but at the end at Berlin they have got interest in seeing Russia more integrated with EU and EU more depending on Moscow.

And then it comes the crazy cell of Europe: Italy.

It's out of doubt that with our long history of relationships with Moscow we are in a curious position: substantially in the past [until the Cold War was and since NATO saw Russian sphere of influence with suspect] we weren't allowed to improve our relations with Moscow [even if in Italy a large part of the establishment wanted], today we can ... theoretically ...

I guess that the best is still to come.

 

I saw an interesting picture. I want to show you.

 

I am perplexed that many conservatives and Obama haters, think Putin is a swell leader.

Does it strike anyone else odd that they elevate such displays of dictatorial powers including international subversiveness, social regression, no accountability and controlled propaganda to the status of desirable traits in a leader.

And compare them to Obama whose actions are at time severely constrained by those very same conservatives.

Surely these conservatives are not merely partisan hacks attempting to denigrate both the presidential role with its limitations and accountability, and the man who holds the position.

NAH, that ain't an democratic perspective they are touting, its merely the fact they like a leader that will tell them what to do or else.

 

Yes Russia loves it that their currency is reaching record lows on the daily which is why they're pumping billions into their currency by selling off foreign reserves to tourniquet the flood.

And your assertion that Russian energy sales are determined by anything other than what Russia is willing to supply is laughable, it doesn't matter what the Ruble is worth there is always going to be a demand for said energy no matter what the price. Tell us what exports are being increased from Russia? Tell us how much more money has Russia made due to the Ruble falling to a record low? The plunge of the Ruble is an economic catastrophe for the RF not a boom.

Can you provide a single article from RT critical of Putin? You will not find one.

The already repressive press freedom environment in Russia declined even further with Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012, as authorities relied on both crude and sophisticated forms of media management to distract the public from terrorist attacks, economic troubles, and antigovernment protests. The government maintained its grip on key television outlets and tightened controls over the internet during the year, and most state and privately owned mass media engaged in blatant propaganda that glorified the country’s national leaders and fostered an image of political pluralism—especially in the months ahead of Putin’s victory in the March presidential election.

Although the constitution provides for freedom of speech and of the press, officials have used the country’s politicized and corrupt court system to harass the few remaining independent journalists who dare to criticize widespread abuses by the authorities. The constitution and a 2009 law provide for freedom of information, but accessing information related to government bodies, the judiciary, or via government websites is extremely difficult in practice. Russian law contains a broad definition of extremism that authorities frequently use to silence government critics, including journalists; the enforcement of this and other restrictive legal provisions has encouraged self-censorship.

In the summer and fall of 2012, Putin and the parliament—controlled by his United Russia party—approved a series of repressive, vaguely worded measures that significantly expanded the array of regulatory tools available to stifle legitimate news reporting on politically embarrassing issues and limit the work of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) on media matters. A law passed in July reintroduced criminal defamation, with fines of up to five million rubles ($153,000) or up to 12 weeks of forced correctional labor. The year’s other new measures included a law that increased fines for participation in unsanctioned rallies from a maximum of 300 rubles ($9.15) to 300,000 rubles ($9,150); a law requiring NGOs with foreign funding to register with the Justice Ministry as “foreign agents”; an expansion of the legal definition of treason to include cooperating with international organizations “against the security of Russia”; and the expulsion of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) from Russia.

In addition, a vague, restrictive law that came into force in November granted the state telecommunications regulator Roskomnadzor broad authority to shutter websites, ostensibly to protect children from harmful information. In the first month of the law’s implementation, Roskomnadzor blocked 4,640 websites for allegedly containing “offensive content” related to drugs and pornography. Internet service providers were already required to block content on a government-maintained list of “extremist materials.” Critics of the restrictions alleged that the growing role of the internet as an alternative source of news had prompted the authorities to expand their control over web-based content.

Prosecutors in 2012 charged a number of government critics—including journalists, media outlets, ordinary citizens, and whistle-blowing civil servants—with defamation, extremism, and other trumped-up offenses in an effort to limit their activities. In a major ongoing case, Aleksey Navalny, one of Russia’s most prominent bloggers, posted embarrassing allegations of corrupt financial practices among senior government officials on his blog. In retaliation, he was detained, smeared in the pro-Kremlin media, and had three criminal fraud investigations launched against him by the end of the year. Separately, in April a court in Kemerovo convicted blogger Dmitry Shipilov of “insulting a state official in public” for two posts that had mocked the region’s governor, Aman Tuleyev. Shipilov was sentenced to 11 months of community service, with 10 percent of his earnings garnished. In May, Maksim Yefimov, a blogger and opposition activist from the northwestern Karelia region, fled to Estonia after being charged with “inciting religious hatred” for criticizing the Russian Orthodox Church’s close ties to the Kremlin.

A wave of antigovernment protests in response to widespread fraud in the December 2011 parliamentary elections led authorities to intensify verbal and legal harassment of media outlets covering the demonstrations in the months ahead of the March 2012 presidential vote. In January, Putin publically accused Moscow-based liberal radio station Ekho Moskvy of continually “pouring diarrhea” on him. The next month, prosecutors briefly subpoenaed Ekho Moskvy’s editor in chief, Aleksey Venediktov, for an alleged labor code violation, while the radio station’s owner—Gazprom-Media, an arm of the state-owned natural gas monopoly Gazprom—abruptly announced a change in the board of directors that included the removal of two independent members. In response, Venediktov resigned from the board, but remained editor in chief. Also in February, police and security officers, as well as more than 100 financial auditors, raided the headquarters and 19 branches of National Reserve Bank, whose owner, Aleksandr Lebedev, partly owns the prominent independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta. Separately during the year, the authorities used legal technicalities to harass foreign correspondents whose reporting embarrassed the Kremlin. In February, Federal Migration Service officials in Vladimir, east of Moscow, detained French journalist Anne Nivat, interrogated her for four hours, canceled her business visa, and expelled her from the country in retaliation for her interviews with opposition activists.

According to media monitoring by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), more than 25 documentaries praising Putin were aired in the weeks ahead of the March presidential election, while private broadcasters virtually disregarded the campaign activities of other candidates. The media were largely filled with either apolitical entertainment or pro-Kremlin propaganda, avoiding coverage of protests by members of a rising urban middle class who demanded better public services and less corruption. In March and October, Gazprom’s national television channel, NTV, broadcast a two-part pseudodocumentary, Anatomy of a Protest, in an effort to smear increasingly popular activists such as Navalny and Sergey Udaltsov, a leftist opposition leader.

Although the internet remains freer than other media and provides a wider diversity of news and opinion, the authorities are aware that its growing popularity is undermining the dominance of state-controlled outlets and have been responding with more aggressive intimidation of independent-minded bloggers, content removal, and manipulation of online expression. Kremlin allies have purchased several independent online newspapers or created their own progovernment news websites, and they are reportedly cultivating a network of bloggers and computer hackers who are paid to produce pro-Kremlin propaganda and disable independent news and blogging sites. The websites of prominent independent media including the newspapers Novaya Gazeta and Kommersant, Ekho Moskvy, the internet-based television station Dozhd, and the news aggregator Slon.ru all experienced denial-of-service attacks in 2012, especially surrounding the presidential election and anti-Putin protests in Moscow in June. The Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Interior Ministry engage in widespread surveillance of e-mail, blogs, online bulletin boards, and websites. Using upgraded technology, the FSB has expanded its ability to monitor all telephone and internet communications of perceived political opponents. Roskomnadzor developed an automated monitoring system that was activated in time for the December 2011 and March 2012 elections to improve its detection of “extremist” content on the web.

Journalists in 2012 faced the threat of intimidation or physical attack when covering sensitive topics such as the situation in the restive North Caucasus, government corruption, organized crime, police torture, electoral violations, and opposition activities and protests. Widespread lawlessness allows politicians, security agents, and criminals to silence journalists with impunity. During postelection protests in Lubyanka Square in Moscow in March, police officers used violence to arrest three journalists. An officer struck Kommersant FM radio reporter Ulyana Malashenko on the head with a baton, causing injuries that required hospitalization. In addition, police arrested two journalists and a leading opposition blogger at a demonstration in Moscow’s Pushkin Square on the same day. In April, Elena Milashina, a special correspondent for Novaya Gazeta covering rights abuses in the North Caucasus region, was repeatedly beaten by two men in the Moscow suburb of Balashikha. In June, Russia’s chief federal investigator, Aleksandr Bastrykin, took Novaya Gazeta deputy editor Sergey Sokolov by car to a forest outside of Moscow, asked his guards to leave them, and allegedly threatened the editor with death, after Sokolov refused to apologize for the content of an article documenting alleged misconduct by Bastrykin and other law enforcement officers in a criminal case. Bastrykin reportedly apologized the next day. In July, the Elektron radio and television station in the southwestern city of Krymsk was besieged by a variety of government inspectors after it aired complaints about the abysmal assistance that flood victims were receiving from local authorities.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, one journalist was killed in retaliation for his work in 2012. Kazbek Gekkiyev, a 28-year-old news anchor for a local affiliate of the state broadcaster VGTRK in Nalchik, capital of the North Caucasus republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, was shot in the head and killed in December after Muslim separatist fighters in the region had posted death threats online against journalists working for state media. Investigators said the assailants had asked Gekkiyev if he was a news anchor before shooting him. The authorities have failed to investigate or solve the vast majority of crimes against journalists in recent years. Suspects who are identified rarely receive serious punishments and are often low-level criminals involved in attacks ordered by others. In December, relatives and colleagues of Anna Politkovskaya, a prominent Novaya Gazeta journalist who was murdered in Moscow in 2006, denounced a closed two-day trial of former police officer Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov, who was originally charged with organizing her murder. Pavlyuchenkov had struck a plea deal with prosecutors that resulted in him being charged only as an accomplice in the killing, receiving an 11-year sentence, and paying three million rubles ($99,000) in compensation to Politkovskaya’s family; he was not compelled to publicly identify the mastermind of the killing.

The authorities exert significant influence over the information landscape through a vast state-owned media empire. The state owns, either directly or through proxies, all six of the national television networks, two national radio networks, two of the 14 national newspapers, more than 60 percent of the roughly 45,000 registered local newspapers and periodicals, and two national news agencies. Government-controlled television is still the primary source of news for most Russians. Media diversity continued to decline in 2012 as private companies loyal to the Kremlin and regional authorities purchased additional outlets, and most other media outlets remained dependent on state subsidies as well as on government printing, distribution, and transmission facilities. Lively if cautious political debate was mostly limited to glossy weekly magazines, news websites, and Ekho Moskvy, all of whose audiences were composed largely of urban, educated, and affluent Russians. The country’s ongoing economic crisis has led to a decline in advertising revenue for the few remaining independent media outlets, forcing some to tone down their news coverage in pursuit of advertising contracts from government agencies. In August, a state-run television channel led by a council of pro-Kremlin Muslim clerics began broadcasting progovernment programs on Islamic themes.

International radio and television broadcasting is restricted. Most private FM radio stations have been pressured to stop rebroadcasting news programs from the British Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), and Voice of America, relegating those services to less accessible short- and medium-wave frequencies. In November 2012, RFE/RL lost its medium-wave local broadcasting license due to the implementation of a 2011 law prohibiting foreign ownership of broadcast media.

Online media have developed rapidly, and an estimated 53 percent of the population accessed the internet in 2012. In one sign of the changing environment, the market research firm TNS reported that in April 2012, Russia’s leading search engine, Yandex, drew more visitors per day—19 million—than the popular state-controlled Channel One television station attracted viewers. Also during the year, journalists widely utilized online news sites, blogs, social media, and smartphone images and videos from citizens to expose election violations and other government abuses.

http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2013/russia#.VFAgq8m7aS0

There is an entire 24/7 news network in the US and countless AM radio shows seemingly dedicated to criticizing Obama so ya way to fail.

Authoritarian regimes.

Are you delusional? All the European nations in the map hate Russia.

I provided the same statistics, the majority of the people in 28 out of the 39 countries surveyed like Obama so way to fail.

 

Lower fuel prices helps Russia by lowering the cost of living and doing business.
In fact, Russia should lower the price of petroleum a lot more for Russians.

BTW Russia did not create the problem in Ukraine. It was the US & EU that created all the problems in Ukraine since hijacking Kiev and killing or driving out the established public servants.

 

... and your massive cut-and-paste from the Freedom House article goes on and on and on.... Very impressive.

Russia is THE FIFTH LARGEST ECONOMY IN THE WORLD: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/russia/exports .

It has ups, and downs, and ups. Not too surprising after antagonistic subterfuge, interference, and opposition from nearly every central bank in the world! Nevertheless, where, pray tell, is the death-spiral into catastrophe and oblivion that you see going on in Russia today? Where is the inevitable civil unrest mayhem, food riots, mobs storming the Russian banks demanding to get their money out?! If the FIFTH LARGEST ECONOMY IN THE WORLD is cratering, then why hasn't the price of gold and silver skyrocketed with all these panicked Russians fighting each other to buy precious metals with their near-worthless Rubles...?!

Your "proof" is threadbare at best... worse, it doesn't even pass the common-sense test.... One last thought -- if the Germans and others hate Russia so much, why is there such a collective sigh of relief that they're going to get access to all that cheap Russian natural gas now that Putin's deal is sealed? Or, to put it another way -- by contrast, exactly WHAT beneficial thing has Obama done for Europe?

 

Well, yes, even when repeated, it's nothing more, or less, than FreedomHouse's editorial opinion. One thing struck me as odd though, given your description of Russia as being a totally ****ed-up economic basket case: "Lively if cautious political debate was mostly limited to glossy weekly magazines, news websites, and Ekho Moskvy, all of whose audiences were composed largely of urban, educated, and affluent Russians."

Then, what does this mean? There are urban, educated, affluent Russians -- even according to an antagonistic propaganda organ like FreedomHouse?! They have lively political debates in the ultra-authoritarian Russia you are so intent on describing? Among educated, affluent Russians?! You mean Russia has events like that, and people like that, even though you and your sort are bent on creating the impression that everybody there is eating fish heads and rats, while hiding in sewers from the State Secret Police?!

Suggestion, O Teacher of Reptiles -- why don't you get your ****ing story straight and then come back and scare us all to death about how modern-day Russia is really just Nazi Germany, except that everybody speaks Russian.... Oh, and while you're at it, you might want to come up with an authoritative source to testify that Russians are hurling themselves onto police bayonets, trying desperately to get their money out of banks so that they can go buy gold! That is what's going on... right? It just doesn't get reported... right? Well, if nothing else, it would flavor the "story" better than this FreedomHouse crap you've come up with....

Seriously, before you mindlessly continue pitching your tent with the FreedomHouse bunch, you might want to familiarize yourself a little bit with them: http://www.voltairenet.org/article30112.html

 

Do you live in an alternate universe?

Russia's Ruble Plunges Past 43 to U.S. Dollar, 55 to Euro

 

Overt lies, one expects nothing less from Moscovite trolls.

Since you failed to read let alone address the statistics and figures of Russian authoritarian state ownership of the overwhelming majority of the Russian press we are done here as you have no argument and are doing nothing here but posting Moscovite lies and failing to address even a single point that I have made just choosing to pretend like incontrovertible facts were just presented to you.

 

lol taken completely out of context:

Lively if cautious political debate was mostly limited to glossy weekly magazines, news websites, and Ekho Moskvy, and Ekho Moskvy, all of whose audiences were composed largely of urban, educated, and affluent Russians.


If you had actually bothered to read you would understand that the vast majority of Russians get their news not from these independent outlets but from the state owned propaganda mills, and even the independent outlets mentioned are coming under attack:

In January, Putin publically accused Moscow-based liberal radio station Ekho Moskvy of continually “pouring diarrhea” on him. The next month, prosecutors briefly subpoenaed Ekho Moskvy’s editor in chief, Aleksey Venediktov, for an alleged labor code violation, while the radio station’s owner—Gazprom-Media, an arm of the state-owned natural gas monopoly Gazprom—abruptly announced a change in the board of directors that included the removal of two independent members. In response, Venediktov resigned from the board, but remained editor in chief.

he websites of prominent independent media including the newspapers Novaya Gazeta and Kommersant, Ekho Moskvy, the internet-based television station Dozhd, and the news aggregator Slon.ru all experienced denial-of-service attacks in 2012, especially surrounding the presidential election and anti-Putin protests in Moscow in June. The Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Interior Ministry engage in widespread surveillance of e-mail, blogs, online bulletin boards, and websites. Using upgraded technology, the FSB has expanded its ability to monitor all telephone and internet communications of perceived political opponents. Roskomnadzor developed an automated monitoring system that was activated in time for the December 2011 and March 2012 elections to improve its detection of “extremist” content on the web.

 

More blatant falsehoods from Mr. Face.

It seems your penchant for spreading misinformation knows no bounds. Which US government agency are you working for, by the way?

 

We don't even have free markets anymore. They're heavily manipulated, as is evidenced by what's been happening with precious metals (prices fall even as demand soars). As we move away from the US's unipolar world, however, it will begin to matter much less what they try to do to Russia's currency and economy.

 

The mainstream media in the US is controlled by a corporate cartel, the same cartel who is pushing for military and economic conflict with Russia. Meanwhile, the Obama administration, like good little puppets, has been aggressively curtailing freedom of the press on behalf of this cartel. This sordid state of affairs has managed to escape your notice, like almost every other relevant fact in existence.

James Risen: Obama hates the press

USA Today’s Susan Page: Obama administration most ‘dangerous’ to media in history

Journalists criticize White House for 'secrecy'

CBS News confirms Sharyl Attkisson's computer hacked

Reporter Sharyl Attkisson says feds hacked computer, CBS protected Obama

Pruitt: DOJ broke rules in phone records seizure

Justice Department’s scrutiny of Fox News reporter James Rosen in leak case draws fire

No-fly zone near Ferguson protests were meant "to keep media out"

 

just talking but no action and research had been done yet

 

I didn't dispute any of the data which shows who-owns-what in Russia. I merely disputed your broad-brush propaganda generated by FreedomHouse. Did YOU not read the material I provided about it?

And, oh, BTW, did you have nothing of substance to dispute the fact (FACT) that Russia now has accomplished an enormously successful deal for energy with Ukraine, and from there, to all of Western Europe. They've done this in spite of the fact that all the big central banks have fought tooth-and-toenail to wreck the Russian economy and its currency.

It's amazing. Obama gets through a week without making a blundering ass out of himself and the hyperliberal Left is breathless with praise. Putin crafts a business deal that makes Russia the definitive "go-to" nation for energy in all of Eurasia, which is good for everybody except central bankers, and all the Left can do is spit at him and Russia. How unsurprising....

 

At least there'll be gas for heat in Ukraine this winter...

EU, Russia, Ukraine agree on winter gas supply deal
Sun, Sep 27, 2015 - MAJOR ACHIEVEMENT: The gas talks had been held hostage by a conflict that has now cost 8,000 lives, but tensions have eased as a ceasefire appears to be holding

 

Russia really has no choice...the Bluff has been called.

 

You just have to love the description of the US coup in Ukraine as a: "popular uprising ousted pro-Moscow president Victor Yanukovich..." Once spin takes a grip it remains for ever and ever.