"That's right Gary, and tell us how the Ukrainians invented fire, electricity, the radio, television, and the Rubric's Cube."
Ah yes - another Straw Dog. How entertaining.
But here is the truth about the the origin of the "Russian' gas industry ) and why all the pipelines run thru Ukraine.
One quick note: Interesting that the "oppressed Ukrainians of the 1920s" were able to get the highly sought and hard to attain positions in the technical fields - I thought the Russians were oppressing them and discriminating against anything or anyone Ukrainian? Hmmm.
Now for the long answer
You left this out of your cut and paste:
"The leadership of Gazprom (the Russian company) in the 90s was largely of Ukrainian origin."
"But after a while, some in Russia started questioning why a territory that persisted in seeing itself as independent should get the same access to cheap gas as Russian citizens, and began to ask Ukraine to pay international commercial rates. Gas continued to flow, but negotiations became heated; price increases were announced but remained unpaid, talks of delinquent debt and penalties started to fly around, and threats to cut off supplies were made. Emergency payments (or promises of payments) were made, barter deals signed, but in the end Ukraine kept on paying almost nothing for the gas it received (and in the early 90s, that gas represented about 100 bcm/y (billion cubic meters), i.e. more than it exported to Europe, including former Warsaw pact members). On 3 occasions (one in 1992, and twice in 1993), Russia cut off deliveries to Ukraine for a couple of days.
Each time, Ukraine reduced deliveries to Europe by the same amount, effectively diverting transit gas. That rang alarm bells in various countries like France, Germany and Italy, and Russia hurriedly restored deliveries. Deliveries to Europe have not been cut since then."
"Corruption in the Ukrainian gas industry meant that certain officials took advantage of Gazprom's inability to enforce payment in order to enrich themselves. As in Russia, the final consumers in Ukraine quite often paid for their gas, but the bill collector chose not to pass on these revenues to Gazprom (in Russia for political reasons, and in Ukraine thanks to control over the export routes)."
"Delivering gas to Ukraine is a source of vast profits for a few well placed people in Ukraine and within Gazprom - and obviously in their respective governments, and there is infighting underway for that cake, but certainly no intention to return the loot either to Gazprom/ the Russian State or to the Ukrainian consumers who already pay their gas at fairly high prices."
Why would you leave that sort of info out? Hmmm.