On January 13 when our continent entered the worst phase of its latest gas crisis, I had a Skype-chat with an overseas buddy, who, amongst other things, asked whatever is wrong with this ‘gas gibberish’.

While attempting to brief him on the issue, I slowly came to realise that he had no knowledge whatsoever of either the peculiarities of gas pipeline routes, or why some countries would aim at getting discounts from gas market prices, or even of troubled political relations between Russia and Ukraine.

Though one might view this as a typical case of ‘American ignorance’, I find it excusable: for them this is something happening ‘in a galaxy far, far away’.

“I don't see why everyone is so obsessed with this natural gas, IMHO gay gas is just as good,” I said jokingly, before abruptly changing the subject; thankfully we had other things to talk about.

Still the question remained: how does one describe complicated things like that to an American, whose country gets its gas mainly from Canada and some from Trinidad and Tobago, with no transit and/or discount issues involved?

Then after a night of excessively playing Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe the answer dawned on me clear as home distilled vodka.

Vladimir Kremlev for RT. Click to enlarge.

Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev are respectively the Batman and Robin of Europe’s energy security. Though with no tights and cloaks their good alignment is obvious; all they want is for gas to flow in one direction and money in the opposite.

Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko is the Catwoman; no one really knows whether she is a good or a bad character. On one hand, she is available for talks, when nobody else in Ukraine is, and generally taking a more flexible position; on the other hand, rumours are she is also the mistress of gas kickbacks at Naftogas, which implies quite a different connotation to her flexibility.

Ukraine’s President Victor Yushchenko is definitely the Joker. With Ukraine’s recent history being about big interminable political crises, Yushchenko has always had that killer trick up his sleeve, which helped him survive countless impeachment attempts and create last-minute parliament coalitions. And his latest declaration: “These hands didn’t steal anything” is a typical Joker line. One can totally see Joker claiming that his hands didn’t kill anyone; it was his gun or his poisoned lipstick etc.

Also, as you know, Joker got his very unique look after a tragic fall into a vat of chemicals. Now if you take a good look at Yushchenko’s face, it will leave little doubt that he has endured his fair share of chemicals too, though the chemicals, which gave birth to Joker’s were acid green, while in Yushchenko’s case – acid orange. Of course the latter doesn’t use all the makeup Joker does, but we have to give the guy some time, he might start to do so eventually.

Similarly, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is the Wonder Woman; Czech PM Mirek Topolanek, with all his movement, has to be the Flash; French President Nicolas Sarkozy is the Plastic Man; while Azeri President Ilham Aliev is the Green Lantern.

There you have it – our boring European gas gibberish is quite like the age-old, but still hellishly exciting superhero/villain strife.

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