You are wrong in this point. I do not advocate price fixing and it makes sense that the eastern Europeans will pay market prices. It is in the interest of us all that they reduce their massive wasting of energy and this will only happen if the prices are rising. The problem is, that the transition to the market realities has to be made smooth without leaving them out in the cold winter. They need -let's say- 4 or 5 years to change their economies and technical requirements to market prices. Since Russia is the most important inheritor of the USSR they have to take over this responsibility. Not for ever but for a while. Ukraine and Belarus were also parts of the USSR. So they have a right to a passable solution.
With Lukashenko out of the way the Belarussian people will prosper and choose a leader of THEIR design, not the one that best pleases Poland or the EU.
Agreed. It is not Poland, Putin or the EU who has the right ro choose the leader of Belarus. It will be the Belorussian people.
The German situation seems quite different and mostly unrelated.
Things have to be seen in an overview. Gasprom has a strategy. The most important part of this strategy is Germany since there comes the money from. The "new" Europeans play only a underpart in this play. The pay too little to be important. Therefore the only one who has the possibility to change something to the better in the recent gas crisis is Mrs. Merkel and her gouvernment. That are simply the facts.
The transition was never smooth.
I personally know folks who lost everything they had when the ruble went from 5 to a dollar to 40 to a dollar.
You don't like price fixing and don't like Lukashenko, I don't see a reason to cry.
As for Germany I was under the impresson there's a new pipe line going strait to them, they've got the best energy garuntee in the EU, I don't know much more than that.
Soviet Union ended FIFTEEN years ago.