Back in June, when Greece was still predisposed to waving around an MOU for participation in the Turkish Stream natural gas pipeline in a desperate attempt to play the Russian pivot card and force Brussels to blink, we remarked that the Turkish Stream MOU with Greece wasn’t the only preliminary energy deal Gazprom inked at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum. The company also signed a memorandum of intent with Shell, E.On and OMV to double the capacity of the Nord Stream pipeline — the shortest route from Russian gas fields to Europe — to 110bcm/year. That, we said, proves Russia is making progress in efforts to facilitate the unimpeded flow of gas to Europe even as the crisis in Ukraine escalates. Nearly three months later and Ukraine isn’t happy. Neither is Slovakia. Here’s Bloomberg: Eastern European nations set to lose billions of dollars in natural gas transit fees are lambasting western Europe for striking another pipeline deal with Russia that will circumvent Ukraine. The prime ministers of Slovakia and Ukraine criticized an agreement between western European companies from Germany’s EON AG to Paris-based Engie with Russian pipeline gas export monopoly Gazprom PJSC to expand a Baltic Sea link. Western European leaders and companies are “betraying” their eastern neighbors, Slovakia’s Robert Fico said after meeting Ukraine’s Arseniy Yatsenyuk in the Slovak capital of Bratislava on Thursday. Gazprom and EON, Engie, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, OMV AG and BASF SE signed an agreement last week to expand Nord Stream by 55 billion cubic meters a year, or almost 15 percent of current EU demand. Ukraine, already struggling to avoid a default amid a conflict with Moscow-backed separatists in its east, is set to lose $2 billion a year in transit fees while Slovakia would lose hundreds of millions of euros, the leaders said. Russia is trying to cut how much gas it ships via Ukraine’s Soviet-era pipelines as international courts arbitrate in pricing disputes between the nations, echoing spats that caused supplies to Europe to halt several times during the past decade. Russia currently ships about a third of its Europe-bound gas via Ukraine, down from about two-thirds in 2011, when the Nord Stream pipeline under the Baltic Sea started supplying Germany directly. Nord Stream-2, set to start supplying Europe in 2019, completely neglects Polish interests and hurts the EU’s unity in the face of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “aggression” in Ukraine, Polish President Andrzej Duda said on Wednesday. Ukraine’s Yatsenyuk called the project “anti-Ukrainian and anti-European” on Thursday. “They are making idiots of us,” Fico said. “You can’t talk for months about how to stabilize the situation and then take a decision that puts Ukraine and Slovakia into an unenviable situation.” Well, sure you can. In fact, when it comes to making grand public declarations about “stabilizing” unstable geopolitical situations and then turning around and doing something completely destabilizing, the West (and especially the US) are without equal, as evidenced by all manner of historical precedent including Washington’s efforts to help sack Viktor Yanukovych whose ouster precipitated the conflict in Ukraine in the first place. And make no mistake, to the extent there’s energy and money involved, that’s all the more true which is why it isn’t at all surprising that Western Europe would facilitate a deal that lets Gazprom bypass a war zone if it means getting natural gas to countries that “matter” in a more efficient way. Now that doesn't mean the EU won't cover its tracks by filing anti-trust charges against Gazprom or by publicly decrying the Kremlin's alleged role in fueling Ukraine's civil war, but what it does mean is that the interests of war-torn nations and their beleaguered masses simply don't matter when there's natural gas involved. Just ask a Syrian refugee.