The gas pipeline in the American side, anno 1982

The Gas Wars, of which we translated a documentary “The Great Gas Game” – An Excellent Documentary from Vesti and published a number of articles, like The Third Gas War: EU and US must pay for their “successes” in Ukraine, the saga with Navalny, and the ultimate blowing up of the Nord Stream pipeline by the USA in order to freeze Germany out of competition, are just the recent manifistations. Lets us look at the events of 1982, and see how USA was opposing the gas pipeline from the USSR to the Western Europe.

We illustrate it through a series of caricatures and posts, which we originally published on out Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.


Piped Piper of a Pipeline

Bill Mauldin’s caricature, published in the Chicago Sun-Times in 1982, shoes an issue that remains relevant for decades. It was drawn when the United States and Europe were at odds over the construction of the world’s first transcontinental gas pipeline Urengoy – Pomary – Uzhgorod.

The construction was colossal, the whole of the USSR contributing to it, with other interested countries taking part in it – Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and the GDR. At first, it was planned to pull the gas pipeline from Yamburg, but later the Urengoyskoye field was chosen.

The United States, as always, tried to prevent the implementation of a project beneficial to Europe. But back then Germany, France, Great Britain and Italy still had a voice and teeth. And the sanctions imposed by the United States were quickly lifted.

Yuzhniigiprogaz Design Institute from Donetsk became the general designer of the gas pipeline. It had previously performed brilliantly in similar, albeit more modest projects.

The construction was completed ahead of schedule. On July 9, 1983, labour collectives reported on the commissioning of the integrated gas treatment plant No. 9.

👉 4,451 kilometers of steel pipe had been stretched to solve the ambitious task of supplying natural gas from Siberian fields to consumers in the USSR and European countries.

👉 2.7 million tons of pipes were laid during the construction of the gas pipeline.

👉 120 kilometers were laid through permafrost, 360 kilometers through swamps.

Gas went to Europe on January 13, 1984, making the USSR the leader in its production and sale.

A lot of cartoons appeared on the topic, no less biting on the Soviet side.

The facility built by the whole country later became the basis of political speculation of the state education called “Ukraine”.

Source: Our Donbass – edited


«The unfeasible dream of the overseas pirate»

This is the title of the caricature by Yuri Cherepanov, published in the November issue №31 of the Soviet satirical magazine «Krokodil» in 1982.

The pirate in question, sailing under the US flag, has «Threats» and «Sanctions» written on his sails.

40 years ago, Western Europe managed to stand up for its own intetrests. Now… the USA simply blew up the completed Nord Stream.
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“The Great Gas Game” – An Excellent Documentary from Vesti

The Gas Wars are continuing. Starting well during the time of USSR, when the USA tried to stop the supply of the Russian gas to Europe by the means of sanctions and provocations, through the Ukrainian gas machinations, when Ukraine was used as a patsy to sabotage and undermine Russian supplier reputation, while at the same time blackmailing Russia for cheap under-market-priced gas, which I wrote about in a 2014 article The Third Gas War: EU and US must pay for their “successes” in Ukraine.

Now the USA are trying to sabotage Nord Stream 2 by blackmailing Germany. This follows the successful blackmailing and sabotage of Bulgaria, which stopped the construction of the South Stream and depriving Bulgaria of about $700.000.000 and $800.000.000 per year over a span of 50 years – USA and EU successfully stole from Bulgaria about $37.500.000.000

And before that, USA/NATO invaded and bombed Yugoslavia, bombing into oblivion the gas refinery in the Serbian town of Pacevo in 1999.

All this recent, and not so recent, history is very well chronicled in the new English-subtitled documentary from Vesti: “The Great Gas Game”

UPDATE 2022: Since YouTube applied the “freedom of speech” principle and removed all speech that does not conform to the American directive on freedom, i.e. all Russian channels, including the one from the VGTRK that hosted the documentary, I re-uploaded a backup copy, which I happened to have, to Odysee.

The Third Gas War: EU and US must pay for their “successes” in Ukraine

This is a translation from Russian of an article by Evgenij Pozhidaev, originally found here. The article gives a good overview of the history in Ukrainian-Russain gas relations. It was published on the 25th of April 2014. The article is speed-translated using Google translate and then extensively edited, making it human-readable.

An in-depth analysis of the latest events in this gas war can be read in superb blog post by Lada Ray – Gas Wars: Why Is Ukraine Refusing to Pay for Russian Gas?, “Ukraine wants communism, not capitalism, when it comes to gas” and Lada Ray: Urgent! Gas Wars: Why Is Ukraine Refusing to Pay for Russian Gas? June 14, 2014.

As I was translating this, the Supreme Court of Ukraine stated that Timoshenko is innocent of all gas-related charges against her, effectively legitimizing the gas theft schemes she was involved in.

After the translation of the article, I jotted a few highlights from the latest development.


The Third Gas War: EU and US must pay for their “successes” in Ukraine

So, Russia and Ukraine are on the brink of the next (third) gas war. The gas conflict receded into the background, against the backdrop of the “hot” fighting and repression in the South East, however, it may leave a long-lasting and even larger impact on the Ukrainian political landscape. We begin with a retrospective – especially as gas wars long since became part of the Ukrainian political mythology, the main character of which is a sinister totalitarian neighbour strangling young democracy and not allowing it to achieve great success and genuine European prosperity.

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