Proof we(the world) don't know anything about Ukraine: the gas never went off and I'm still warm

"Do you know what my American friends asked me?" I said to the history students in 2nd period English. "They asked me if I still had heat, if we could cook or if anyone had gas."

"Really?" said Lubomyr.

"Yes," I said, "they think you are all freezing."

The class burst into laughter and giggles at the ridiculous notion. When I arrived in the United States for Christmas in late December, Russian gas giant GazProm shut the natural gas lines going through Ukraine to Europe. Russia accused Ukraine of stealing gas, Ukraine fired back saying Russia was blackmailing the country in order to build a new pipeline around Ukraine. I began getting emails saying "are you going to have heat?"

Standing in front of my students last Thursday, I realized I had been thinking the same thing for a while and I felt embarrassed. The heat never went off. Ukraine, the largest country in Europe, also has the largest gas reserves. During the reign of the Soviet Union, Ukraine was the principal natural gas reserve holding for everything under the Iron Curtain. Those tanks didn't disappear when the wall fell, and Ukraine has made good use of them. 

According the Kyiv Post, Ukraine had enough gas reserves to supply the entire country for 9 months without relief. Businesses and some individuals did suffer from lack of gas, but as one editorialist in the Post pointed out, shutting off the gas was never a real threat against Ukraine. Kiev has enough gas already. 

So why did we(Americans, The West, the world) think Ukrainians were burning their furniture?

In a nutshell: we don't get our news from Ukraine, we get it from Russia.

Unbeknownst to me, and anyone who's never traveled to this part of the world, the west has adopted all sorts of fun Russified words and names for Soviet satellite countries like Ukraine, George, Bulgaria, etc. "Lviv," where I live, is the Ukrainian name. But type that into Orbitz.com or United Airlines' website and it will draw a blank. You have to type in "LVO" or "Lvov," the Russian name in order to book a flight here.

It's the same for news. According to one of my students who is studying Journalism at Ivan Franko University in Lviv, her college is conducting a study on the western media and where they get their sources. According to Ivan Franko, most western journalists know Russian journalists or Russian news, so they call them first. Most of the coverage in the U.S. of the gas crisis came from Moscow, not from Kiev. 

As many Ukrainians will tell you, and as the Kyiv Post likes to point out on a weekly basis, Russia and Ukraine have strained relations to say the least. A very smart editorial from that online publication noted how countries surrounding Russia pay staggered prices for natural gas, depending on how loyal they have been to the Kremlin. Belarus(or Bielo-Russia meaning "White Russia") pays the least, less than $200 US. Ukraine pays closer to $500 US for the same type and quantity of gas.