In A Shocking Decision, Russian Prez Changes Route Of Gas Pipeline Project Due To Differences With The West
Brussels : The sudden announcement by Russia that it will shelve the huge South Stream gas has taken Europe by surprise. The grandiose project that was once intended to establish Russia’s dominance in southeastern Europe fell victim to Russia’s increasingly toxic relationship with the West.
The shock decision also shows the need for the EU to find new energy sources, European Commission vice president Kristalina Georgieva said on Tuesday.
But the European Union said that despite President Vladimir Putin’s shock decision, Brussels will continue internal talks to resolve the problems that Putin blamed for the collapse of the multi-billion-dollar project. “Russia’s decision to stop South Stream and the way it was taken show why the diversification of the energy sources is important for Europe,” Georgieva, whose native Bulgaria is at the heart of the dispute over the pipeline, told reporters.
“The Commission will closely examine the consequences of this decision and how we can speed up the interconnection of Member States.”
Putin announced on a visit to Turkey that he was shelving the South Stream pipeline project to deliver Russian gas to Europe, a flagship Kremlin project half a decade in the making. It was to have bypassed crisis-hit Ukraine, going through Bulgaria, non-EU Serbia, Italy, Austria and then to the rest of the European Union.
But Bulgaria changed its mind on the pipeline in June after the EU said Sofia had breached the bloc’s competition rules by the way it awarded contracts for its leg of the pipeline.
Georgieva, officially the EU’s budget commissioner, said Russia was using this as an excuse amid a growing stand-off over gas supplies and the crisis in Ukraine.
“The Commission has always had a clear position on South Stream, which is that the construction of pipelines should correspond to EU rules,” Georgieva said. “This position is clear but it is in place for quite some time and it cannot be the reason for this decision by Russia”.
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Ukraine, Pro-Russian Rebels Push New Truce
Donetsk (Ukraine) : Ukraine and pro-Russian rebels “agreed in principle” on a ceasefire in one separatist province and were working to conclude a broader truce on today that would end nearly eight months of bloodshed, reports AFP.
The latest push for peace in the former Soviet country was being spearheaded by European negotiators alarmed at the unravelling of a September 5 peace deal as tensions between the Russia and the West reach a post-Cold War high. The Ukrainian conflict has killed more than 4,300 people and seen NATO fortify defences to help protect former Soviet satellite nations from what it sees as the Kremlin’s new expansionist threat. Foreign ministers from the Western military alliance were meeting in Brussels today to chart a course after what they have dubbed as a “year of aggression” by Russia against its smaller neighbour.
Moscow denies helping the separatists in eastern Ukraine and sees the West as trying to undermine Russia’s rightful influence in the former Soviet bloc. The Russian foreign ministry issued a furious statement on Monday accusing NATO of “trying to destabilise the world’s most stable region” by sending extra defences into countries such as the three tiny Baltic states. But the diplomatic standoff comes with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko — a pro-Western leader who won a May election vowing to reunite his crumbling state — facing growing domestic condemnation over the climbing toll of the war.
The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said that a round of unannounced negotiations produced the outlines of a truce agreement in Lugansk — one of two pro-Russian provinces under rebel control. “All agreed in principle to a total ceasefire along the entire line of contact between Ukrainian Armed Forces and those under control of the (Lugansk People’s Republic), to be effective from 5 December,” the OSCE said in a statement released.
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