The situation along the EU southern borders is serious. The crisis in the community is going on and a rise of rightist radical trends can be observed, making some politicians talk on war, instead of aiming their efforts at poorer Eastern Partnership countries. Internal EU issues haven’t been solved yet. That was directly stated by Victoria Nuland during her Kiev visit. The US diplomat voiced the readiness of the USA to grant money to Ukraine, but only under the condition that reforms were implemented within the state. “We are ready to help, but neither the USA, nor the IMF will give money to an unreformed Ukraine,” the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs at the United States Department of State said back then. She even dropped an uncensored line in a recording that leaked.
“Fuck the EU,” she says during the 5-minute-long tape on YouTube and in Twitter. The voice of Nuland can be recognized and the man she talks to is most likely US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt .
The announcements on a possible transfer of Crimea to Russia made CEO of Exxon Mobil Rex Tillerson state that his company intended to postpone the reconnaissance within the Ukrainian part of the Black Sea due to the unstable situation in Crimea.
Nowadays gas production in the shelf covers only the needs of Crimea. According to the latest agreements, signed with Ukraine with Western investors the shelf might provide 10 – 12 bln. m3 of gas, with billions of investments. Its potential however exceeds 3.5 trillion m3. Independent experts say we are talking here on about USD 4 bln., a sum that the Italian ENI and French EDF should have spared for the development of the shelf.
Before the saber-rattling, China had agreed to investments to the tune of USD 13 bln. with the previous authorities for the construction of a modern port on the territory of the peninsula, exploited by both China and Ukraine. The word was about a wide range of Chinese goods headed to Europe and vice versa.
China also had planned to construct a new airport, a shipyard, a petrol refinery, a terminal for liquefied natural gas, also training centers, along with investments into the tourist and entertainment industry. This all was supposed to be part of the Talia Silk Road that would shorten the road of Chinese goods to Europe by 6,000 km. Today China and Ukraine will have to ask for the opinion of Moscow that Beijing has a strategic partnership with, which really irritates the USA with its implemented fracking revolution. Despite all this these projects are unlikely to mark some economic benefit without the continental part of Ukraine and its transport links.
The unstable situation in the Middle East and Turkey, the activation of the Islamic movements place under threat Europe’s energy security. One somehow tends to forget the Russian monopolist domination on European energy markets, but we will tackle this in Part 3 of the Battle for Crimea.
English version: Zhivko Stanchev
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