MOSCOW, September 30. /ITAR-TASS/. Although Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk keeps claiming that the country can do without Russian gas, Kiev these days looks far more pliable as winter time is round the corner. At last Saturday’s talks between Russian and Ukrainian energy ministers in Berlin, also attended by the EU’s energy commissioner, Gunther Oettinger, the two countries agreed that Kiev will pay part of its debt for the already consumed fuel, while Gazprom will be supplying gas to Ukraine for six coming months at a price of $385 billion per 1,000 cubic meters. President Poroshenko and Prime Minister Yatsenyuk decided to be cautious so as not to freeze their own people and Europe, several polled experts have told ITAR-TASS.
Ukrainian Energy Minister Yuri Prodan as usual disagreed with the proposal for paying the gas debt by two instalments. At a news conference in Berlin Prodan said Ukraine would like to pay the debt in three tranches, the first one being $1.5 billion.
However, experts believe that the European Union will eventually put pressures on Kiev and the preliminary compromise of October 2-3 will be translated into reality. If an agreement is approved at the EU level, Ukraine will have to pay Russia $3.1 billion by the end of 2014 for the previously supplied gas. Russia, in turn, will guarantee at least 5 billion cubic meters of gas for months to come.
The Russian Energy Ministry has explained that the $3.1 billion in question is only part of the $5.3 billion debt - this is precisely the sum Ukraine’s Naftogaz owes to Gazprom. “The World Bank and the European Union may act as guarantors of the agreement,” Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak has said.
“But the achieved intermediate compromise between Moscow and Kiev on the resumption of Russian gas supplies is largely a result of the political factor: the situation in Ukraine’s war-ravaged southeast is subsiding. Also, October 26 will see elections to Ukraine’s national legislature, Verkhovna Rada, so Kiev is forced to do its utmost to persuade the electorate to stay calm,” the international research director at the Institute of Modern Development, Sergey Kulik, has told ITAR-TASS.
