14 July 2023 17:34

Politics

Ukraine is urged to show more gratitude while Kyiv may cut off gas transit from Russia

Authors

Olexandra Zakharova , Hennadii Kats

Ukraine may cut off gas transit from Russia while being called to show more gratitude for weapons

The U.S. Congress failed to cancel aid to Ukraine, the US and Great Britain urged Ukraine to be more grateful after the NATO summit in Vilnius, and Kyrylo Budanov explained the publicity of Ukraine's intelligence chief. Meanwhile, Ukraine can stop the transit of Russian gas through its territory.

offers a digest of Western mass media at the end of the July 10–14, 2023, business week.

MAGA Republicans failed to cut aid to Ukraine

The House moved forward on Thursday on trying to pass an $886 billion defense bill that would grant a 5.2 percent pay raise to military personnel, counter aggressive moves by China and Russia, and establish a special inspector general to oversee U.S. aid to Ukraine, The New York Times reports.

With Republicans having only a slim majority, a small group of ultraconservative Republicans had threatened to block the defense legislation if their proposals, including pulling U.S. aid to Ukraine, weren’t put to a vote.

So Speaker Kevin McCarthy led the House through votes on dozens of proposed modifications. The House overwhelmingly defeated two Republican efforts to cut U.S. military assistance for Ukraine. The vote was 341 to 89 to reject a measure from Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, to end a $300 million program to train and equip Ukrainian soldiers, which has been in place for almost a decade.

And by a vote of 358 to 70, the House rejected a proposal from Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, to prohibit sending any more security assistance to Ukraine. In both cases, the supporters were all Republicans.

Those results were a victory for mainstream Republicans, who have defended U.S. military assistance to Ukraine as vital to countering Russia. But they reflected how anti-Ukraine sentiment is growing in the Republican ranks. In the spring, only 57 Republicans voted against a $40 billion package of military and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine.

The U.S. and the U.K. urge more gratitude from Ukraine

Ben Wallace said Ukraine ought to show more gratitude. Photo: Getty Images

According to The Guardian, Britain’s defense secretary Ben Wallace and the U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan have suggested Ukraine ought to show more gratitude for the help it has received from the west, in response to Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s complaints that his country has not been issued a firm timetable or set of conditions for joining NATO.

"Whether we like it or not, people want to see a bit of gratitude," Wallace noted, advising Ukraine that it might help if it took a different approach.

Wallace said Ukraine had a habit of treating allies, including the UK, as if they were an Amazon warehouse with lists of demands for weapons — and was not always careful to try to win over more skeptical politicians in the U.S. Congress and elsewhere.

Jake Sullivan responded harshly to the suggestion that Biden wants Ukraine to lose. Photo: Getty Images

For his part, Jake Sullivan said that "the American people do deserve a degree of gratitude," in response to a pointed question from a Ukrainian activist, Daryna Kaleniuk, who asked if Joe Biden was withholding NATO membership because he was "afraid of Russia losing, afraid of Ukraine winning".

Sullivan, clearly irritated, stressed that the United States has provided an "enormous" amount of aid to Ukraine.

How Ukraine reacted to reproach from Wallace and Sullivan

Zelenskyy responded to reproach from Wallace and Sullivan. Photo: the Office of the President

The remarks caused surprise and confusion in Kyiv, as they appeared to jar with most British government statements offering unequivocal support for Ukraine, The Guardian further reports.

Prime minister Rishi Sunak swiftly distanced himself from Wallace’s remarks and Zelenskiy, speaking in Vilnius on Wednesday, said:

"I don’t know what he means, how else we should be thankful. Let him write to me … Maybe in the morning we should wake up and personally thank the minister."

Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s security council, said on Thursday that Wallace’s words were a solitary ill-advised outburst rather than an indication of fatigue creeping in among Ukraine’s allies.

"I wouldn’t pay too much attention to what he said. Everyone can say something when they are emotional and then regret it … I know for sure this isn’t his actual position," said Danilov, stressing that Ukraine had always been grateful for western support.

Danilov made a point of singling out British support for Ukraine, contrasting it with some other countries.

"If everyone had helped us as much as Britain helps us, we would have a totally different situation now," he said.

Although Zelenskyy traveled to Vilnius furious at the lack of a firm NATO commitment, he later has been keen to portray the summit as a win for Ukraine, noting particularly a pledge of support from the G7.

The G7 nations vowed their "unwavering commitment to the strategic goal of creating a free, independent, democratic, and sovereign Ukraine" and said each country would focus on bilateral support to help boost Ukraine’s military capability.

"The main result for us is that we will have direct dialogue with seven countries. With each country we will have an individual approach and see the best way of cooperation possible," said Danilov.

Why Budanov gained so much publicity

Budanov explained his publicity to Western mass media. Photo: Ukrainian Pravda

For an intelligence chief running Ukraine's spy operations during war with Russia, Kyrylo Budanov, 37, has built up an unusually public profile that he has used to get his message out and to menace Russia from afar, Reuters reports.

These days, a spy boss cannot stay in the shadows, he says.

"And all the next wars are going to look like this. In any country in the world. We can say that we're setting a trend here," the head of Ukraine's Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) told Reuters in an interview.

"We completely lost the information war in 2014. And the war, which began in (2022) — we started here in a completely different way. And now the Russians are losing the information battle."

Budanov also noted that Ukrainian intelligence had sources inside Russian leadership. Thus, according to GUR, during the mutiny of the Warner PMC, the mercenaries headed for a nuclear base in pursuit of a "backpack-sized atomic weapon." Several Russian sources that spoke to Reuters confirmed parts of that account.

Budanov has seen his popularity and public profile surge inside Ukraine during the war, while in Russian media he is a hate figure. The Kremlin decried as "monstrous" a remark he made in May that "we will keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world until the complete victory of Ukraine".

Russia has blamed Ukrainian secret services for the murders of a pro-war Russian blogger and a pro-war journalist. A court in Moscow had arrested Budanov in absentia in April on terrorism charges.

Budanov doesn't resist the analogy between the GUR and Israel's Mossad:

"If you're asking about Mossad as being famous (for) ... eliminating enemies of their state, then we were doing it and we will be doing it. We don't need to create anything because it already exists."

Since Budanov took charge of the spy service there have been numerous failed attempts on his life, including a botched car bombing in which the assailant was blown up.

"The only thing I can say is that they haven't stopped attempting it, but I will repeat – it's all in vain," Budanov said.

Will Kyiv shut off the transit of Russian gas via Ukraine?

Ukraine may shut off the transit of Russian gas Photo: depositphotos.com

Kyiv is unlikely to renew a gas transit deal that allows Russia's Gazprom to export natural gas to the EU using pipelines running across Ukraine, Energy Minister German Galushchenko told POLITICO.

The transit deal concluded for the period from 2019 until the end of 2024 allows Gazprom to export more than 40 billion cubic meters of gas a year via Ukraine, which earns Kyiv about $7 billion. It accounts for around 5 percent of the EU's gas imports, but that's only a third of the prewar level. Russian natural gas mainly goes to Austria, Slovakia, Italy, and Hungary.

"I believe, by the winter of 2024, Europe will not need Russian gas at all. If now profits from Russian gas pay for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and Gazprom’s private army, the only thing they should pay for in the future shall be reparations," said Galushchenko.

Gazprom chief Alexei Miller warned last week his company will stop exports if Ukraine doesn't drop its efforts to seize Russian state assets to enforce a $5 billion award for the energy infrastructure Moscow illegally expropriated when it annexed Crimea in 2014.

The European Commission has plans to end the bloc’s reliance on Moscow’s fossil fuels by 2027. However, the EU countries still using Russian gas aren't moving fast enough to diversify. Austria's Russian gas imports are back to prewar levels. Hungary gets around 4.5 billion cubic meters a year. In April, its government signed a deal with Gazprom to secure additional volumes.

Kyiv ending the gas deal could cause problems for those countries. At the same time, it would represent a much more permanent potential break with Moscow.

"Keeping the thing alive means there’s maybe a chance in the future to go back to that. But if the flows are stopped there’s a risk it’s going to be completely dismantled, and the privilege these countries had in the past of getting access to cheap Siberian gas is going to be gone forever," said Georg Zachmann, senior fellow at economic think tank Bruegel.