Editorial in the current edition of the Kyiv Post

“Betrayal!. . . Angela Merkel is also Ukraine’s foe of the week, although Joe Biden is a close second.”

via
I have never understood the Ukrainian side of this controversy. In the past seven years, Ukraine has passionately slashed all imaginable connections with Russia. You can’t catch a plane from Moscow to Kiev anymore. Whole eastern Ukrainian industries, from aviation, to giant turbines to railroad cars have been blocked from dealing with their historic, and pretty much only, markets in Russia. Those deep and comprehensive — and often quite unilateral — Ukrainian sanctions have badly exacerbated the post-Maidan economic crisis in what I would have argued were unnecessary ways. But the point of firmly cutting Russia out of Ukraine’s economic life, I assume, was to teach those Russians that Ukraine doesn’t need them, or their filthy money, or any of those [economically-sensible] joint ventures that formerly existed. A lot of Ukrainians, especially in the east, have suffered considerably in the making of that point.
So why do the Maidan crowd in Kiev cling to a leaky Soviet-era pipeline for dear life like this? I was given to believe that Ukraine had a whole program aimed at weaning the country from Russian gas altogether. Is that not the case? OK, transit fees amount to $2 to $3 billion a year, hard cash, but are we saying that Ukraine can’t live without that money? Small price to pay for freedom, no?
Of course the two NordStream pipelines are entirely political projects. Despite much of what you read, the fact is that NordStream II will not increase the amount of Russian gas flowing to Europe at all, just change the mode of delivery. When the Russians started building these pipelines — NordStream I, TurkStream, and now NordStream II — the point was never particularly to increase gas deliveries to Europe. The one and only purpose of those pipelines was to bypass unfriendly — and in the Russian view unreliable — transit countries like Ukraine and Poland, cut out the transit fees and deliver Gazprom supplies directly to Germany and markets beyond.
I get that the Russians are being real pricks about this. And they are playing a long game here, aren’t they? What I don’t get is why Ukrainian elites, who supposedly thirst for independence, and are willing to throw thousands of Ukrainian workers into the streets to prove that Ukraine doesn’t need any Russian economic cooperation, aren’t pleased to see the end of Russian gas dependence and delighted to be facing the imminent demise of that old Soviet pipeline network? [Because, of course, whatever Merkel said, it’s doomed]. They should be jumping up and down with joy, and shouting “good riddance!” to Russian gas. Instead, the voice of the Ukrainian diaspora is spewing this unbelievably bitter, teeth-gnashing tripe.