Russian president to attend informal talks with CIS leaders

[Iterate]

8. After Gazprom Takeover, Southern Kyrgyzstan Marks 24th Day Without Gas

Meanwhile, in Southern Kyrgyzstan relations are chilly.

After Gazprom Takeover, Southern Kyrgyzstan Marks 24th Day Without Gas
May 7, 2014 - 6:55am, by Murat Sadykov Inside the Cocoon

When Russian state energy giant Gazprom took control of Kyrgyzstan’s gas network last month, the prime minister called the transfer a “historic event.” Gazprom chairman Aleksey Miller promised his company "guarantees a stable gas supply.”

Neither seems very reliable to residents of southern Kyrgyzstan today, the 24th day the region has been without gas.

Four days after the formal transfer ceremony, Uzbekistan cut gas supplies to southern Kyrgyzstan. Residents of Osh, Kyrgyzstan’s second-largest city, complain they have been forced to use expensive electricity or cook over wood or dung stoves. Fortunately, the weather is warm. One resident describes a previous cut-off, during winter, when he used seven candles to boil water to make tea for his children.

Gazprom was meant to end such outages. Under the deal, which the Kyrgyz parliament approved in December, for a symbolic $1 Gazprom snapped up Kyrgyzgaz and its property and gained rent-free use of land any facilities stand on. In exchange it took on Kyrgyzgaz’s estimated $38 million debt and pledged some $600 million to improve Kyrgyzstan’s crumbling gas grid. In the long-term, the Kyrgyz hope Gazprom can streamline energy supplies and ease the dire power shortages the country experiences every winter.

more...http://www.eurasianet.org/node/68347

It gets even better, but I can only cite the four.