MOSCOW: Paying no heed to the supposed season of goodwill, Russia’s decision to cut gas supplies to Ukraine is a clear warning Moscow will continue playing hardball with recalcitrant neighbours in 2009.

The scenery may have been festive as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was shown discussing the crisis in a broadcast with President Dmitry Medvedev by a giant Christmas tree at the president’s country residence but the tone was not.

Putin’s warning was clear and not veiled with any seasonal cheer – Ukraine would face “severe consequences” if it dared disrupt the transit of Russian gas to Europe in response to the cut in its own supplies.

Medvedev has shown he is capable of talking tough just like his predecessor, alluding in a separate broadcast to coming through the “tests” of the year gone by that saw Russia send troops into the heart of Georgia.

“We’ve already several times shown what we’re capable of ... I’m sure we can deal with whatever difficulties lie ahead,” Medvedev said in an interview broadcast just before the New Year.

Russia’s leadership has in the last week delivered a tight performance in a country that nine years ago saw a discredited president Boris Yeltsin apologise for his faults in a New Year’s Eve broadcast and resign.

Independent political analyst Vladimir Pribylovsky said Russia is quite ready to continue using energy to bring to heel neighbours that prompt its displeasure in whatever way.

And Russia feels great displeasure with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko after he set his country on a course towards NATO membership and backed Georgia in its war with Russia.“If Yushchenko and (Prime Minister Yulia) Tymoshenko announced they had decided not to join NATO, the gas would be put back on in 10 minutes,” said Pribylovsky.

“There’s of course an imperialist syndrome in the way Ukraine is viewed” by the Kremlin, said Pribylovsky. Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union until communism’s collapse in 1991.

The Kremlin’s main goal in the current crisis was not commercial but to destabilise Ukraine’s pro-Western leadership while maintaining a corrupt system of gas payments, said Anders Aslund, a leading expert on the Russian economy.

“The main objective here is to destabilise Ukrainian politics, to show how bad democracy is in this part of the world so that it shouldn’t be tried in Russia,” said Aslund, of the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

But behind its tough talk, Russia also betrays a nervousness about the risks of being portrayed in the West as a bully, as it was in a similar gas conflict at the start of 2006.

The Gazprom energy giant has stressed its flexibility in an English-language website devoted to the crisis, saying that “Gazprom has left no stone unturned to avoid the reduction of supplies to Ukraine.”

Ronald Smith, chief analyst at the Moscow-based Alfa Bank, said Moscow would push ahead as fast as possible with pipeline projects that should enable it to ship gas to Europe independently of transit countries like Ukraine, chiefly via the planned North Stream link under the Baltic Sea.

Smith, who argues Russia has considerable arguments on its side, including the high cost of procuring gas, predicts the relationship will for some time remain an edgy, antagonistic one, coloured by personal differences.

“At this point the relationship has become antagonistic enough. You wonder how soon they can get back to normal relations,” said Smith.—AFP