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Saturday, 07 October 2017 09:03

RUSSIA: INVADER OF UKRAINE, PIRATE OF THE BLACK SEA

Michael MacKay, Radio Lemberg, 07.10.2017 
 
Russia is a high seas pirate. On 14 December 2015, Russian “Spetsnaz” special forces soldiers landed on and then seized two Ukrainian oil platforms in the Black Sea. The rigs were in international waters, about 150 kilometres from Odesa, within Ukraine’s exclusive maritime economic zone.  Russia then towed the captured oil platforms closer to Crimea, which is a territory of Ukraine the invaders from Muscovy illegally occupy. 
 
Ukraine protested in the strongest terms, accusing Russia of “large-scale looting.” But the rest of the world pretended it never happened, and kept a stony silence on the matter. The international community should have been outraged, and grabbed the oil platforms back. By letting Russia get away with piracy, effete Western nations put the business of oil and gas extraction at risk everywhere. If Ukrainian oil platforms in the Black Sea can be stolen by Russia, then British oil platforms in the North Sea aren’t safe and American oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico aren’t safe. 
 
Russia’s entire oil and gas industry is tainted and corrupted by Russia’s invasion and illegal occupation of Ukraine, its piracy of oil platforms, and its theft of oil and gas. Ukraine’s state-run energy firm Naftogaz is seeking compensation in international courts for $15.7 billion in assets stolen by Russia in Crimea alone. About 6 million cubic metres of natural gas has already been stolen by Russia from Ukrainian gas fields since Russia invaded Ukraine on 20 February 2014. Any oil and natural gas coming from the Russian Federation must now be suspected to be stolen property. Therefore Europe cannot, in good conscience, collaborate with the Russian monopoly Gazprom and proceed with the NordStream2 project. Transit of gas from Russia through the Baltic Sea is inseparable from theft of Ukrainian gas from the Black Sea. It is fruit of the poison tree. Russia’s entire oil and gas industry weighed down like an anchor to its reckless and stupid acts of Black Sea piracy. Individuals and entities responsible for stealing from Ukraine must be subject to the severest sanctions. These include Igor Sechin (Executive Chairman of Rosneft), Gerhard Schröder (Chairman of Rosneft), Alexey Miller (Deputy Chairman of the Gazprom Board of Directors), Rosneft as a whole, and Gazprom as a whole. 
 
The only honest way out of this mess is a complete embargo on Russia’s oil and gas industry and complete cut-off of Russia from the world’s financial systems (such as the SWIFT international payment network). Russian Black Sea pirates should have been dealt with long ago, but that’s no excuse not to make a start now.
  
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