After the visit of Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko to Moscow, the natural gas debt of Ukraine “not only did not reduce, but even increased”, Gasprom CEO Alexey Miller claimed at meeting with RF President Dmitriy Medvedev.
According to the Kremlin press-service, he noted that Gazprom has been holding talks on a long-term gas contract with the Ukrainian side for over several days already.
“I must admit the readiness of long-term contracts on natural gas supplies to Ukraine and the long-term contract on natural gas transit via the Ukrainian territory is high. All the necessary documents were prepared at the corporative level”, A.Miller noted.
He recalled that the agreement stipulates a gradual transferring to market natural gas prices since January 1, 2011, that is, to the formula of natural gas payments for European countries.
According to him, a condition for transition to a new system of relations, by which the natural gas will be supplied at fixed prices for two years (2009 and 2010), was that Ukraine would pay back its debt.
“This condition of paying back the debt was not fulfilled, and the question you asked “Where are the money”, is absolutely reasonable. The amount is merely astronomic – 2.4 billion U.S. dollars. Besides, as of today, we do not see any progress in talks with the Ukrainian side on when we will see the money”, A.Miller said to the RF President.
As UNIAN reported earlier, on November 20, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev ordered gas export monopoly Gazprom to ask Ukraine to pay back its gas debt to Russia, which Gazprom estimates at $2.4 billion, local agencies reported on Thursday, according to Reuters.
