Russia/Ukraine: With Political Rift Still Deep, Russia-Ukraine Gas Deal Is Widely Seen as a Patch

Oct 31, 2014 | New York Times
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A deal struck on Thursday to restart Russian natural gas supplies to Ukraine will keep homes heated this winter, but it does not fully settle a fierce, long-running fight over energy prices that is likely to resume early next year if not sooner, analysts said Friday.More crucially, though, the grudging acceptance of the deal did not signal an imminent end to the deeper political dispute over eastern Ukraine. That standoff has brought Russia and the West into their most dangerous conflict since the Cold War and spawned the bloodiest violence in Europe since the conflicts in the Balkans of the 1990s.