Ukraine needs to balance out its gas, prices need to become more level: A December report by the International Monetary Fund said, "Consumers in Ukraine now pay only 10-40 percent of the international price of gas. This subsidization encourages overuse (Ukraine is among the world's least energy-efficient countries), expands the need for very costly imports, and through the required budget subsidy (or unpaid taxes) distorts spending and taxation." Ukraine uses more energy per unit of GDP than almost any other nation in the world and more than two and a half times as much as the average of the OECD nations.

The latest Gazprom pricing policy strips away any remaining veneer of credibility from previous statements by Moscow that it will "not use energy as a weapon." Russia wants Ukraine to now pay $418 per 1,000 cubic meters for natural gas. This is higher than Germany, Gazprom's biggest customer, pays and more than four times the rate levied on Belarus.

Pressuring Ukraine now is a blatant attempt to destabilize one of the few former Soviet republics that is not a one man, president-for-life police state and has real prospects for eventually becoming a NATO member. These gas hikes, coupled with the impact of the current international economic crisis, could deal a fatal blow to the country, which is precisely what Moscow wants.

… it's a kinder, gentler version of Moscow's invasion of Georgia last year - sending a signal by walloping Kiev with an energy two-by-four. Message: Think twice about joining NATO - a red line that the Kremlin has been growling about, and may well be willing to go to the mat over.

Russia also wants Ukraine to knuckle under on extending the lease for Russia's Black Sea Fleet base in Crimea beyond the agreement's 2017 expiration. (Kiev said it won't be renewing the pact.)

The cut-off is also a shot across Europe's bow. It gets nearly 40 percent of its natural gas (and one-third of its oil) from Russia - and it's clear: Moscow is in no mood to be messed with.

Russia is displeased with Europe about its support for a planned US missile-defense system in Eastern Europe, for Kosovo's independence from Moscow's ally Serbia last spring and for Georgia during Russia's invasion last summer - to name just a few matters.

Even as the crisis continues, a second debate has opened concerning how Europe can avoid another such gas-fired cold war in the future. Some Russian analysts suggest the Ukraine standoff argues that alternative pipelines – Nord Stream, South Stream and Blue Stream – must move from the drawing board into construction. For some over-coat-clad observers in Eastern Europe, this proposed remedy simply increases the number of levers Russia would hold, the better to manipulate Europe's gas supply in the next crisis. Others cite the Nabucco project, much-discussed and much-delayed, as a means of decreasing dependence on Russian gas.

Increasingly, however, discussions raise a third alternative: the nuclear option. Long out of favor on the American side of the Atlantic, nuclear power has been a stronger element in Europe's energy mix. At the edges of the global warming debate, a few voices have braved Green scorn to make a clean-energy case for nuclear power over sources that carry a heavy carbon footprint. For others, nuclear energy has always been a means towards energy independence.”

Russian-NATO Council launched in 1997, completely reversing decades of animosity and turning it into cooperation.  However, often disappointing.  Today, relationship in deep crisis, particularly after the Russia-Georgia conflict.

Once hopeful that they could find common ground and possibly construct a new European security framework, NATO and Russia now view on another with deep-rooted mistrust and suspicion, with few prospects for reconciliation or even dialogue.

… Many in Russia, Europe, and the United States predict that it will take years, if not decades, to restore ties to levels seen in the post-Cold war period when cooperation, however difficult at times, was at least plausible.”