[LowTaxesEqualsProsperity]

Not true. Russia has recently built South Stream and North Stream pipelines, which can carry gas without transiting Urkaine.

Putin realized Ukraine will be unstable, and acted accordingly.

Russia can strangle Ukraine economically if it wants to, but it doesn’t want to, and it would hurt Russia, too.

[jimbo123]

Putin can control the pipelines in Western Ukraine by cutting off gas to Western Europe every time it gets really cold. He doesn’t need to occupy them to control the pipelines.

[Reaganite Republican]

I was in the Czech Republic five years ago when they where scrapping and the gas flow fell to zero... all came though Ukraine via Slovakia and then on to Prague

[RayChuang88]

Russia could even be MORE of a petroleum superpower once the eastern Siberia and Sakhalin oil and natural reserves really open up in the next 20 years. No wonder why Russia may try to cut a deal with Norway over shipping natural gas to the rest of Europe and may even cut a deal with Japan on returning the westernmost four of the Kuril Islands in return for guaranteed Japanese buy of Russian natural gas and oil.

[meatloaf]

South Stream hasn’t been completed. Gazprom is estimating the pipeline will be completed in late 2015. The main part in the depths of the Black Sea remain to be finished. I wouldn’t be surprised if the completion date isn’t a bit optimistic.

http://www.gazprom.com/about/production/projects/pipelines/south-stream/

[thackney]

Even after completion, together they will have far less capacity to move the product.

They are not building them to replace Ukraine pipelines, but to supplement them with more product.