They are actually demanding the payment agreed to for goods already delivered? The unreasonable bastards!

(sarcasm, of course)

It should be a duzy!

No doubt it's already on its way.

How is that?

The theft was done by oligarchs.

So to agree to a crony, oligarchical contract is to, quite literally, steal from the people.

So it's still the oligarchs' fault. The same thing happened to Greece. Rich elites stealing from the people causing the country to no longer be able to pay its bills.

The only country to really go after the elites is Iceland, but then, Iceland could afford to default. Greece, not so much. Ukraine, absolutely not. If Ukraine defaulted Russia would send them into bitter cold winters for years. Tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people would die.

my point was that it's hypocritical for our government to criticize Putin for that when they are carrying water for bankers who intentionally break countries to steal their natural resources.

When the oligarchs stole the gas he should have held them accountable, instead he saw a profitable situation.

Ukraine should have never ever been responsible for Gazprom's pipelines. It is ridiculous. Contract law 101.

that would be a step in the right direction.

just sanction them, bomb them, invade them and get your Russian equivalent Ivy league son a job sitting back and filtering off their wages and resources. And don't forget to blame the whole thing on..em....let's see........Quebec. Yeah that sounds about right.

That seems to be how it's done.

NATO/EU/USA sought to cancel that lease....by an outside-driven coup.

Surely you support the self-determination of the people of Crimea, given you are a child of revolution yourself?

You actually believe that fake vote? Not to mention that the actual Crimean people (Tartars) were purged by Russia.

Name ONE reputable, non-PNAC, non-EU, non-bankster source.

Gullible people fall for propaganda...over in our Weekend Economist Thread, we get regular reports from an American expat on the ground. I'd take his observations over any amount of demonization any government puts out.

Have fun with your Russian propaganda. The rain has stopped and it's time to go outside for me.

Russia has many areas with ethnically distinct groups are in the majority. I have not seen Vladimir or others in the Russian government rushing to allow 'self-determination' for those folks. It would seem that the 'right of self-determination' only apply to those with the support of large armies, certainly not to those opposed by large armies.

Just annexed their territory. How quickly people forget that we are the supreme annexers.

acknowledgement that the property belongs to someone else and you are paying for the use of the property for a specified amount of money.

If one is leasing something and then decides just to keep it - not to buy it for an agreed upon price, just to keep it - that is considered theft. While there may not be anyone strong enough to do anything about it, it is what it is.

and not the Ukrainian navel assets and bases with hardware they have stolen after invading with unmarked troops that even Putin eventually acknowledged, were Russian.

(Reuters) - Russia's Gazprom assured European customers it would continue to supply their gas, after its threat to halts supplies to transit nation Ukraine next month over non-payment.

Any shortfall would be the fault of Ukraine, chief executive Alexei Miller told Russian television. Moscow blamed theft by Ukraine for a disruption to exports in a previous dispute.

Russia has warned that it will not supply Ukraine with gas in June unless Kiev pays in advance $1.66 billion (987 million pounds) by June 2, raising fears that gas piped to Europe through Ukraine could be affected.

"Gazprom will simply supply Ukraine as much as gas as it will have bought, and to the Russian border with Ukraine we will send as much gas as Europe should get and Ukraine should transit," Miller said in an interview on Rossiya-24 television.

"It would be our Ukrainian partners' responsibility for a so-called unauthorised off-take. But Gazprom from its part will do everything to ensure that European customers have no problems," Miller told the news show Vesti.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/05/17/uk-ukraine-crisis-russia-gas-idUKKBN0DX07B20140517

No future deals will fall on the Ukrainian people to burden if someone plays bad.

It'll cost a few billion though which will usher in austerity. But like Greece, they will soldier on, and unlike Greece they have vast natural resources to be exploited.