"It is this senior officials of Putin's era brought to the absolute skill-the ability to shoot down interlocutors confusing unexpected changes," says Eduard Steiner in Die Welt, noting that "their leader and mentor, the boss of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, of course, remains unsurpassed in this case".
His closest companions try. So, the head of Gazprom Alexei Miller seemed to be experiencing true pleasure when reported in mid-January, European Commission Vice President Maros Sefkoviču, what's with the 2020 year Russia stops gas transit to Europe through Ukraine and will lead it through Turkey. Miller's turn towards Turkey, tells journalist, echoing Putin became logical continuation of the month before Russia's refusal from participation in the 40-billion dollar project, the South stream gas pipeline, through which Russian gas had to bypass Ukraine across the Black Sea to be delivered into a vein.
"Away from the Ukraine, away from the" South stream "instead of all of them via Turkey"-that is, apparently, looked like the answer the Russians on the desire of Europeans to develop competition in the gas sector, which is very much angered by Gazprom. It was about that from now on as suppliers and operators of pipelines will not be able to speak the same company. However, as noted by Steiner, tough stance of Europeans came in very handy for the Russians, since the financial part of the construction of South stream, "was no longer justified, and besides Moscow intend to develop a new market in China with the help of other costly construction of gas pipelines. But without the gas pipeline to Europe, as found in Russia. "Turkish stream is now the only project, Miller said. -There is no other option. Our European partners informed and now their challenge is to create the necessary gas transport infrastructure from the border of Turkey and Greece ".
Of course, the EU is not expecting this turn of events, described next. According to the Director of the European Centre for research on energy energy and resource security (EUCERS) Frank Umbaha, the European Union was shocked by this idea, "because earlier Gazprom supplied gas directly into the EU, the same is provided and the" South stream "and now suddenly the Russian gas will have to take on the trade transit point in Western Turkey.
"To some extent, Europe finds itself in a quandary," acknowledged Umbah. -It will have to build and pay for the pipeline from Greece to Central Europe, and this despite the fact that there is a possibility where higher levels of transit gas through Ukraine. "In fact, the construction of this thread will support and strengthen the Russian strategy of gas transit bypassing Ukraine Umbah fears. -To the same construction would run counter to the stated EU in March 2014 years plans to strengthen the energy security of Ukraine ".
Gazprom also risks, venturing to build a new "Turkish stream" continues author: on the one hand, in Turkey there are more opponents to the country increased its dependence on Russian gas, but on the other hand, there is simply no other in the region willing to take gas from the Turkish-Greek border, if the EU refuses to build an additional pipeline, and then "Gasprom" will incur huge losses. The problem for Europe, in turn, is that buying gas at the Turkish-Greek border will be more expensive than the transit through Ukraine: Russians want to win back the cost of construction of "Turkish", the article says.
In the best position to today it turns out that Turkey due to its geographical position, can just sit back and wait: she already is indispensable for gas exports from the Caspian States to Europe and now appeared the Russian proposal sums up Steiner.
Source: Die Welt
