Russia’s Economic Aggression against Ukraine

  

[PIC: Russian Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev during his visit to Crimea, Ukraine]
       

    Asreniy Yatsenyuk, Ukrainian Prime Minister, “Russia was unable to seize Ukraine by means of military aggression.” Now, they are implementing plans to seize Ukraine through economic aggression.”
    Ukraine found itself in a difficult situation when Russian natural gas giant, Gazprom raised the price of Ukrainian gas by 81 percent and now requires the ex-Soviet state to pay the highest rate of any of its European clients. 
    Of course, with the raging controversies surrounding Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Ukraine attributes this tremendous hike in price to a “Russian tactic” of putting political pressure on the Ukrainian government. Also, another grievance of Russia is the overthrow of the Moscow backed regime of President Viktor Yanukouvich.
     Ukraine, however does not intend to settle for this Russian political intimidation tactic. Ukrainian Energy Minister Yuriy Prodan has said that Kiev was ready to take Gazprom to arbitration court in Stockholm if Moscow refused to negotiate
over a lower price.
    It is now obvious that Moscow is ready to use any possible measure to ensure that Russia’s will is done in Ukraine and its interests protected. Military aggression not possible, and then they switch to Economic aggression to mount political pressure and possibly force a negotiation. This is an interesting one, let’s just see how this turns out.