Senior Ukranian Olympic rep Volodymyr Gerashchenko was drunk when he offered to sell up to 100 Olympic tickets to a reporter posing as a black market buyer, reports Reuters.
Whether Russia's weekend cutoff of gas supplies to Ukraine was politically motivated--as Ukranian leaders charged--or a clarion call for market pricing, the dispute dramatically underlined the role that energy supplies can play in power politics.
However, attracting American firms would require Ukraine drastically to improve its investment climate, something that no Ukranian leader has managed to achieve, perhaps because trading in Russian gas has been one of the main sources of enrichment for Ukraine's elite groups.