Price of Failure in the Post-soviet Consensus

The history shared by Russia and Ukraine runs deeper than any of the historical links that bind Britain. People in both countries feel a deep sense of brotherhood, and each country has a substantial minority of the other's nationality. Russia's feudal precursor - Kievan Rus - was established in the ninth century in the city that is now the Ukrainian capital.

Elites in Moscow and Kiev have preserved these links, even down to cooperating in corruption scandals. But it was not just the orange revolution last winter that sent relations between the Slavic neighbours into a tailspin. Promises by the Ukrainian president, Viktor Yushchenko, to integrate as rapidly as possible with the EU and Nato certainly irked Moscow. But diplomatic ties have been wobbly ever since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Nikita Khrushchev's decision to hand Crimea from Russia to Ukraine in 1954 - then a minor shift within the Communist behemoth - came home to roost in the wake of the Soviet collapse. Millions of Russians were left stranded in a foreign country, as was the Black Sea fleet, a matter that has been a bone of contention ever since.

Even before the orange uprising, former Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma had declared his country's "European choice", although he crawled back to the Kremlin a little after a domestic political crisis in 2001.

The current dispute between Moscow and Kiev is so bitter because it has ruptured a post- Soviet consensus that in order to get low energy bills, the newly independent states must hand Russia control of a chunk of their economy. In the Kremlin's view, countries that choose to opt out of this unspoken agreement deserve all they get: in this case, a shortage of gas to feed Ukraine's metals industry.

Belarus played the game last week when it ceded its Yamal pipeline carrying gas to European clients to the Russian monopoly Gazprom. As a result, Belarus will get its delivery of Siberian gas at $47 (£27) per 1,000 cubic metres compared with the $230 Gazprom is demanding from Ukraine. Even Georgia, with its anti-Kremlin president, Mikhail Saakashvili, has been careful to avoid slamming the door on Russian participation. Its price this year is $110.

Kiev refused Gazprom's offer to buy into Naftogaz, its state-owned pipeline. Moreover, Russian businessmen do not want to prop up Ukrainian competitors after they were denied a cut of the re-privatisations following Mr Yushchenko's rise to power. While the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, claims the dispute is not political, Moscow officials admit in private it is just that.