World press on Russian-Ukrainian relations (December 2, 2013)

"Russia Offers Ukraine Cheaper Gas to Join Moscow-Led Group" is an article published today by Bloomberg amidst pro-European agreement demonstrations in Ukraine. 

"Russia will offer cheaper natural gas to Ukraine if the government in Kiev opts to join a Moscow-led economic bloc after halting free-trade talks with the European Union, according to First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov.

Ukraine’s economic difficulties will be best resolved if it chooses integration with Russia, Shuvalov said in an interview last month in Bloomberg News’ Moscow office," the article reads. 

"Russia, which supplies 60 percent of Ukraine’s natural gas, threatened trade measures against its neighbor if the EU deal went ahead and offered membership in its customs union as an alternative.

Ukraine would risk the Kremlin-led union with Belarus and Kazakhstan imposing tariffs on its goods if it signs the EU free-trade accord, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev told his Ukrainian counterpart Mykola Azarov at a regional meeting in St. Petersburg on Nov. 20. A day later Ukraine announced it was halting preparations for the EU agreement, due to have been signed at a summit in Lithuania on Nov. 28-29."

"Ukraine will hold talks with Russia in the next two weeks seeking to set gas prices for 2014 so the government can prepare a budget, Azarov said in comments broadcast late yesterday by the non-state television channel Inter. Countries in the customs union would “immediately stop free trade with Ukraine” if the country signed the EU deal, costing the country 400,000 jobs, Azarov said in parliament Nov. 27. The two countries haven’t agreed on new loans and will meet in December to discuss the way ahead, he said. It’s not in Ukraine’s interest to sit on the fence without a commitment to EU association or the Russian-led group, according to Andrey Slepnev, trade minister in the customs union’s Eurasian Economic Commission," the article reads.

"How Putin miscalculated in the struggle for Ukraine" is an article published today by the Financial Times. 

"The demonstrations in Ukraine are both a humiliation and a threat to Mr Putin. While the Russian president may laud the deep cultural and historical ties between Ukraine and Russia, he is discovering that tens of thousands of Ukrainians would prefer to brave freezing temperatures and flying truncheons rather then be drawn closer into the Russian sphere of influence. What is more, if a popular uprising can once again threaten to topple a corrupt and intermittently despotic government in Ukraine, then the potential lesson for Russia is clear. After all, it is less than two years ago that demonstrators filled the streets of Moscow to protest against the Putin restoration and to label his United Russia party as the “party of crooks and thieves”," the article states.

According to the author of the article, "the Russian government has only itself to blame for this turn of events. It has set up a crude tug-of-war with the EU over the fate of its neighbour, while forgetting the obvious lesson of the original Orange Revolution – that if you try to settle the future of Ukraine, over the heads of its people, they can take to the streets in numbers so massive that they can change the political direction of their nation."

"Mr Putin may have miscalculated because he believed his own propaganda about the Orange Revolution. In his view, far from being a genuine popular uprising, it was an event manufactured by western intelligence agencies, using US and EU-funded non-governmental organisations as their tools... This limited and conspiratorial view of the original colour revolutions may have made Moscow vulnerable to another unpleasant surprise on the streets of Ukraine, as ordinary people have moved to undo deals made over their heads by leaders they regard as corrupt and illegitimate."