Putin wants Yushchenko to pay full price for Russian gas

http://english.pravda.ru/main/18/89/356/16611_Ukraine.html

Russia and Ukraine may find themselves on the brink of a "gas war"

When the Russian government finished its regular session yesterday, President Putin invited Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov and economic ministers for a special meeting. Putin started the meeting with a quote by O Henry: "Bolivar can't carry double." The ministers understood that Vladimir Putin was still in the saddle, although his counterpart, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, had to go. "Bolivar" is Gazprom - Russia's largest natural gas monopoly.

This figure of speech from Vladimir Putin marked the unsuccessful end of the talks with Viktor Yushchenko (on the phone) and Vladimir Litvin, the speaker of the Ukrainian government (tete-a-tete).

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This is just a glimpse at how Gas and Oil is going to shape the political landscape of Europe...

Bush is a fool to make decisions based on his first "gut reaction" to people and information. The whole "looked in Putin's eyes and saw his soul" thing was pure foolishness - but bush is... well... In the past couple of years Putin has made several moves that seem very Soviet Unionish... particularly in the arena of consolidating/centralizing power. How does this story fit? I don't know - but shouldn't we be paying attention? Would it be a concern if there were moves to do more than consolidate power in Russia - but also moves to make former soviet republics... "satellite states" Could this be signals... play or we will hit harder and harder to the point (?) of crippling your economy?

Not saying at all that this is where this is going - but trying to express my growing unease with Putin - and my complete puzzlement that the former 'hardliners' in the administration (and the admin is rife with old coldwarriors) don't express any concern about Putin given some of his moves in the past couple of years.