Who's your daddy now, Ukraine? Who's your daddy?

Infidelity has its consequences, especially if your lover is jealous and possessive. Ukraine has just started to feel the "hell has no fury like a lover scorned"  ... yeh, yeh, I know its "a woman scorned" but let's have gender equality, okay?
Ukraine should never have had those licentious dirty affairs with those hordes of Casanovas from far away lands.



Svetlana Burmistrova and Natalia Zinets writing at Reuters:
....Russia raises gas prices  for Ukraine by 80 percent.  
Russia raised the gas price for Ukraine on Thursday for the second time this week, almost doubling it in three days and piling pressure on a neighbour on the brink of bankruptcy in the crisis over Crimea.

The increase, announced in Moscow by Russian natural gas producer Gazprom, means Ukraine will pay 80 percent more for its gas than before the initial increase on Monday.

Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk said the latest move, two weeks after Moscow annexed Ukraine's Crimea region, was unacceptable and warned that he expected Russia to increase pressure on Kiev by limiting supply to his country.

"There is no reason why Russia would raise the gas price for Ukraine ... other than one - politics," Yatseniuk told Reuters in an interview in the Ukrainian capital Kiev.

"We expect Russia to go further in terms of pressure on the gas front, including limiting gas supplies to Ukraine."

Moscow has frequently used energy as a political weapon in dealing with its neighbours, and European customers are concerned Russia might again cut off deliveries in the worst East-West crisis since the Cold War.

"That kind of action taken coercively against Ukraine is something we oppose," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters in Washington. "We believe that markets should determine energy prices."

The head of Russia's top natural gas producer, Gazprom , Alexei Miller told Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev the price increase was due to the introduction of an export duty on gas.

"The gas price is increasing automatically from April," Miller said.

The latest rise will be to $485 per 1,000 cubic metres - two days after Gazprom announced a 44 percent increase in the gas price to $385.5 per 1,000 cubic metres from $268.5 due to unpaid bills. This is much more than the average price paid by consumers in the European Union.

Ukraine covers 50 percent of its gas needs with Russian supplies. It will soon get money from the International Monetary Fund under a new loan package but faces large debts and its economy is in chaos.............