Ukraine’s government. Pipe down

Date: 14/01/06

The explosive political fall-out from the Russian-Ukrainian gas deal

IS A bad deal worse than no deal at all? That is the question facing Ukraine, which last week won a six-month reprieve on Russia's plans to quadruple the price of the gas it supplies. Yet opposition parliamentarians, led by a fiery ex-prime minister, Yulia Timoshenko, say that the deal, which will raise the price of gas from $50 per 1,000 cubic metres to $95, is still too expensive. This week they peremptorily voted to dismiss the entire government.

That sounds like a dramatic setback. Since the 2004 "orange revolution", the pro-western government of President Viktor Yushchenko has been losing credibility both at home and abroad. Russian influence, which crashed after the Kremlin clumsily backed a rigged presidential vote in November 2004, has been returning. The row over gas was a sharp reminder of Ukraine's continued dependence on the goodwill of the country's northern neighbour.

But the government is not dead yet. The legal status of the parliamentary vote is unclear. Mr Yushchenko, who this week called the decision "incomprehensible, illogical, and wrong", plans to challenge it in court. Most observers expect the government to last until the next election, which was anyway due in March. It is unlikely that any political group will have an overall majority after the election. Ukrainian politics will continue to be a story of horsetrading, in which big business, and Russian money, will play a role.

Perhaps the hardest question for a new government will be whether Ukraine can diversify its sources of energy. The new deal with Russia foresees extra deliveries from gas-rich Central Asia--but through Russian pipes, and handled by Rosukrenergo, a murky intermediary company of the kind much favoured by Russia's gas tsars. It might make sense to back a new gas pipeline from Central Asia across the Caucasus that would be independent of Russia. But such action would require a strong, far-sighted government, of which there seems little prospect as yet.