USA Today quotes Brent Scowcroft Center Senior Fellow Ian Brzezinski on Russia’s decision to halt gas deliveries to Ukraine:
“They’re going to need the gas, there’s no question about it,” said Ian Brzezinski, an analyst at the Atlantic Council who was deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Europe and NATO under former president George W. Bush.
Ukraine’s economy is so dependent on Russian natural gas that the cutoff threatens manufacturing plants, could cause massive layoffs and imperils newly elected President Petro Poroshenko to turn the economy toward Europe, Brzezinski said.
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The Russian move “shows that Russia is trying to use energy to further destabilize Ukraine and to separate Ukraine from central and western Europe,” Brzezinski said.