Facing the growing possibility that Ukraine will fail to pay-off its monthly gas bill to Russia, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called upon the European Union leaders to help the former Soviet nation pick up part of the tab. The announcement late last week comes on the heels of last winter’s oil crisis between Russia and Ukraine, which left much of Europe in the cold for months. More than a quarter of Europe’s gas comes from Russia, with the vast majority of it pumped through Ukraine. As Putin’s spokesman noted, Ukraine’s inability to import oil now—particularly to fill up its underground reserves—could be devastating come winter, when demand for oil is highest throughout the continent. On Monday, Ukranian state energy firm Naftogaz reassured Russia that it was already accumulating funds to meet the June 7 deadline on the May oil bill. EU leaders are hoping that Naftogaz stays true to its commitments, as the financial crisis has left little to no room in its budget to accommodate the nation’s debt. A Russian appeal to the IMF to provide similar relief to Ukraine has so far been unanswered.
There is a new campaign in Venezuela to promote President Hugo Chavez’s socialist agenda: a nationwide book fair. But no one has to buy these books. The Chavez government distributed 2.5 million copies of three books—Social Movements in the 21st Century, Culturecide: A History of Argentine Education (1966-2004), and Empire’s Spider Web, a critique of U.S. foreign policy—as a way to achieve Che Guevara’s dream of creating the socialist “new man.” Chavez lectured the nation last Thursday on the importance of reading during a speech that launched a four-day marathon of his television show and the book distribution.
Peru’s foreign minister, Jose Antonio Garcia Belaunde, defended his decision of granting political asylum and refugee status to four fugitive opposition leaders from Bolivia and Venezuela. All four politicians face criminal charges in their home countries, and both Bolivia and Venezuela have criticized the moves as “illegal and politically motivated.” The fugitives include Manuel Rosales, a Venezuelan opposition leader, who arrived in Lima shortly after being charged with corruption and assassination plots during his term as the governor of Zulia state. Belaunde insists that only the “strictest international standards” were applied to his final decision and that he has done nothing wrong by upholding the “international conventions of asylum,” which were agreed upon during the Caracas Convention of 1954. President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela has since requested the help of the international police agency, Interpol, to intervene and return Rosales to his native country. Rosales has been placed on Interpol’s “Most Wanted Persons” list despite his claims that he fled Venezuela because of political persecution as an opposition leader.