To avoid a banking collapse, Cyprus government and its international negotiators devised a plan March 23, to seize savers’ deposits above 100,000 euros at all banks to raise money for a needed bailout.

Cyprus has until March 25 to reach a new deal with its lenders: the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Russians and Ukrainians had set up 6,000 companies in Cyprus so that they can avoid taxes from their mother countries.

Cyprus has natural gas in the waters off its coast toward Israel.

Cypriots view Russia as a useful counterweight to bullying by Brussels, rich Northern Europeans.

There was a rumor that Mr. Kerry had telephoned Cyprus’s finance minister that Washington was ready to help out, as long as Cyprus guaranteed a bigger role for the

United States in gas concessions, and raised the levy on large foreign depositors, many of them Russians, to 15 percent.

Beside low-tax in Cyprus, the other best asset is sunny weather. There is no reason for Cyprus to give up its financial service industry when its other best asset is sunny weather.

Now that natural gas may become their best asset.