Everybody happy as Moscow pays Athens – Athens pays Europe

 By KYLE ANDREW BROWN

Berlin, April 19 – The long searched for solution to Athens cash crunch may be in sight. European bankers are carrying something  €7 billion in unsecured Greek debt. They have profited nicely by the transaction as loan servicing has been kept up by a circular system of cash advances from the IMF and European Central Bank.

But the credit agencies say the game is up – either bring the Greek’s past due balance current or the banks’ credit ratings will sour.

Angela Merkel sent Alexis Tsipras off to Moscow with a mission.

Get the cash from those guys!

And Alexis has perhaps just done that. On Tuesday he may sign an agreement with Vladimir Putin. What everybody’s come up with replaces the shelved Gazprom South Stream gas pipeline. That project would have had Moscow both selling and distributing gas into European markets.

Tuesday’s agreement would set in motion the construction of a Greek Stream gas pipeline. It would transit off the Russian Black Sea coast into Turkey. At Turkey’s border with Greece a transit hub would be constructed.  The hub would distribute gas to European markets in the Balkans, Hungry, Austria and Italy.

Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine from the start opened the eyes of European capitals to their strategic vulnerability to Moscow’s control of winter fuel supplies. Brussels immediately set about coupling its demand for Russian gas to Russia’s demand for European capital.

That policy goal set has yet to be realized. But cash can be the great inhibitor of Soviet ambitions in Europe. Those ambitions are both territorial aggression and political manipulation through gas distribution.

In the meantime, Greece and the government of Alexis Tsipras would be sitting pretty by  this agreement.

Moscow is going to prepay Athens something like €3-5 billion for serving as the conduit of Gazprom’s gas into Europe. Unfortunately for the regular folks in Greece that money will be swept – perhaps not overnight – into the vaults of European bankers.

Athens will not realize in the transaction a sustainable solution to it’s financial floundering. Most of the Greek Treasury  goes to paying Russia for winter fuel. And notably missing from the Moscow-Athens Agreement is a parting gift of free gas.

So any accolades the Greek press sends Alexis Tsipras’ way  for the deal really should go to Angela Merkel who masterminded the whole deal.

All along it was Angela Merkel who reminded everybody Greece was a part of Europe.

And it is Athens – on behalf of Europe – that will pick Moscow’s pockets.