Lithuanian election, Gazprom etc

WSJ has an interesting post about GAZPROM problems with the EU. The Economist puts this in a context of the upcoming Parliamentary elections in Lithuania. As for GAZPROM, they can cut all their gas to Lithuania if they want to starve Kaliningrad. Their abuse of their monopolistic position in Lithuania is ridiculous - to me it does not make sense that Lithuania pays the most in Europe for Russian gas while it is right next to Russia on the same pipelines that provide gas to Germany. As the WSJ article comment points out:

• • 5:27 am September 7, 2012
  • putin the puppetmaster wrote :
  What this article unfortunately fails to mention is that Lithuania is the link to getting those overpriced natural gas resources to Kalingrad at least for the time being. Also, if the EU was serious about backing their eastern eurpean member countries they would have disallowed the pipeline that is being run through the baltic sea straight to germany. Prepare for another cold winter from Kiev through Warsaw to the Baltics. Unite and survive or stand alone and be dominated.

In light of the upcoming elections, things do not look good in this context considering the popularity of the Labor party run by Mr. Uspaskikh (a former Gazprom man?) and "Order and Justice" run by Mr. Paksas.

What frustrates me is the inability of the liberal parties to work together and avoid this perilous vote splitting.  They should put the personal conflicts and unite, if they want to make difference in Lithuania that is.

Just to put things in perspective, the Lithuanian position is weak as far as the support from stronger and bigger Western countries is concerned - Germany is sold on the Nord Stream, France/Italy have never cared, and the US position regarding the support for small democratic countries next to Russia is unclear, as this video shows.