The Kremlin is suddenly PR savvy!

For a second week 18 European Countries have little heat because Russia and Ukraine are squabbling over the price of gas and Russia has cut Europe off.

It happens almost every winter.  Russia cuts the gas supply when Ukraine’s contract comes up, Europe suffers and that is  the Kremlins leverage to get what it wants.   (I will have more on what it wants later.)

Russia has been accused of using energy as a weapon of being an unreliable partner to Europe for energy, and frankly most analysts believe that is all true.

But this year Russia wanted to make Ukraine look like the bad guy, so they had all the pieces in place to roll out a PR campaign.   They have hired Ketchum (a Washington PR firm which services the Kremlin – how odd is that?) to massage the Western media into believing  Ukraine is stealing energy, and that Ukraine is solely to blame for the crisis.

Ketchum has distributed Putin’s statements and Gazprom’s and organized conference calls with Russian speakers etc.

Ketchum was also used to help Russia get it’s message out after the crisis with Georgia and to improve Putin’s image.  Putins image is still what it is, terrible in the West,  but for Ketchum the contract is a good one.

Prime Minister Putin’s spokespeople  were also primed ready to roll out the message “this is only about money” not politics, poor little Russia “only wants to be paid fair  market prices for gas and Ukraine keeps stealing the gas” they say.

But we all know this gas crisis started after Ukraine’s Orange revolution and if you want to know the real motives behind the crisis take very seriously the not so subtle hint yesterday made Russia’s State Gas Giant Gazprom.

Gazprom Deputy CEO Sergey Kupriyanov said the U.S. is behind the crisis because of an agreement signed in December.  The Agreement is a strategic cooperation agreement between America and Ukraine which essentially helps Ukraine towards it’s goal of joining NATO one day.

In other words Russia is furious that Ukraine may be slipping away towards the West and gas is the way it will try to fight Ukraine.  Don’t forget Putin personally supported pro-Russian candidates who failed during the Orange revolution and he wants to settle that score.

It’s not my analysis, but that of Ukraine’s President Yushchenko who say’s Russia is trying to destabilize his Country.

The Ukraine Government is not innocent in all of this.

But if you are sitting in a freezing cold apartment in Bulgaria or Bosnia or one of the 18 Countries effected by all this hot air from Moscow and Kiev that isn’t getting through the pipelines, you would be amazed by the frosty callous use of Gas by the Kremlin for political purposes wouldn’t you?

Unless those people buy the Kremlin’s and Ketchum’s explanation  this is only about the price of gas?  Of course you might  ask “Why don’t they figure out a new contract in the Spring?  Why do I have frost on my walls in winter Mr. Putin”?