You're reading: Putin discusses Ukraine at Saint Petersburg Economic Forum

Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a speech and had a Q&A session at the annual Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum on June 17.

Unlike in
his annual address to the Russian Federal Council in December, where Putin
didn’t mention Ukraine at all, at the forum the Russian leader spoke a lot
about it.

On Donbas autonomy

Putin spoke
about the settlement of the conflict in the eastern part of the country that left
over 9,000 people dead since March 2014, when Russia seized Crimea and sent its
proxies to Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk Oblast, starting a war with the
Ukrainian government.

In February
2015 a shaky ceasefire was reached through the Minsk peace agreements. In
accordance with the deal, Ukraine was to give the occupied territories a
special status of autonomy. The Ukrainian government has been saying that the
special status is impossible until there is a stable ceasefire.

Putin
disagrees. Speaking in Saint Petersburg, he said that Kyiv had to grant the
special status to the occupied territories “as soon as possible.”

“They shoot, the others shoot back – and
there you have a clash. Does it mean we shouldn’t carry out a political
transformation?” Putin said, referring to the frequent ceasefire violations in
Donbas.

“Ukraine
has to pass a law on the special status of these territories that we call
‘unrecognized republics’,” he added.

When Ukrainian parliament was passing in
the first reading the amendments to Constitution that aimed to decentralize
power in Ukraine, right-wing groups who saw the amendments as a premise for
giving a special status for Donbas, attacked the parliament, leaving four
National Guard officers killed and injuring 131 officers.

On
arming OSCE mission

Putin said he supported the suggestion to arm
the OSCE Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, made by Ukrainian President Petro
Poroshenko earlier this year.

It goes against the earlier statements by
the Kremlin. On May 24 Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov spoke against allowing
an armed OSCE mission into Ukrainian Donbas. And on June 1, Ukrainian Foreign
Minister Pavlo Klimkin said that Russia still was against the armed OSCE
mission.

Putin’s support for the idea may seem a
breakthrough after it.

However, Putin didn’t mention introducing a
special police mission of OSCE – which is the idea of Poroshenko – but said
that OSCE monitors “should be allowed to carry firearms.”

Poroshenko insisted on sending the OSCE police
mission to Donbas during his meeting with OSCE Parliamentary Assembly President
Ilkka Kanerva on June 16.

On gas transit

On June 16,
Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller said that Ukraine was charging too much for gas
transit and that Gazprom may develop new gas transit ways north of Ukraine
instead of prolonging the existing contract that is valid till 2019.

Russia used
to pay Ukraine $2.5 for 1,000 cubic meters of gas to pass 100 kilometers, but
according to Gazprom, Ukraine unilaterally upped the price to $4.5 in 2016.
Gazprom threatened to challenge this decision in international courts and
consider dropping Ukraine as a gas transporter.

Speaking in
Saint Petersburg, Putin said that Russia isn’t going to stop transiting gas
through Ukraine, but hinted that the transit may shrink.

“The
previous years have shown that when someone has a monopoly, they are going to
abuse it,” Putin said. “If Ukraine knows that it doesn’t have a monopoly on gas
transit, its officials will stop their blackmail over it.”

Ukraine hasn’t been buying gas from Russia since November 2015, but has been transporting Russian gas to European customers through its gas transit system.