BRUSSELS, September 9. /ITAR-TASS/. The European Commission hopes the date of the resumption of the trilateral talks between Russia, Ukraine and the European Union on natural gas issues will be determined before Saturday, a source close to EU Energy Commissioner Gunther Oettinger said on Tuesday.

“We hope the date will be set by Saturday,” the source told ITAR-TASS.

The commissioner himself said at a news conference after an informal meeting of energy ministers of the Eastern Partnership member states, including Ukraine that was held in Baku on Monday, that the date for the trilateral talks would be set by the end of the current week and they will be held within the two coming weeks.

The trilateral negotiations on the natural gas price and Ukraine’s debt settlement had previously been attended by the heads of the energy agencies of Russia, the European Union and Ukraine – Alexander Novak, Gunther Oettinger and Yuriy Prodan. These consultations were launched on May 2 and yielded no result on Jun 16. After that Russia’s natural gas monopoly Gazprom and Ukraine’s oil and gas company Naftogaz filed counter lawsuits with the Stockholm Arbitration Court.