You're reading: Russian Foreign Ministry’s comments about gas price for Ukraine to be insulting

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has found the comment by director of the Russian Foreign Ministry's economic cooperation department Alexander Gorban about Kyiv's relations with the Customs Union to be insulting.

“Despite the new year’s calm, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry cannot ignore the extremely undiplomatic and insulting to Ukraine interview with our Russian counterpart, Mr. Gorban,” Head of the Information Policy Department of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry Oleh Voloshyn said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine while commenting on a statement by Gorban that Russia won’t lower gas price for Ukraine unless it joins the Customs Union.

The Ukrainian diplomat stressed that in talks both with the Customs Union and with the European Union, or any other international organization, Ukraine pursues exclusively its national interests.

“That’s why we absolutely do not understand a somewhat hysterical tone of Mr. Gorban, which he used in his comment concerning Ukraine’s relations with the Customs Union,” Voloshyn said.

According to him, Kyiv hopes that in the future, highly professional officials of the Russian Foreign Ministry will comment on such a sensitive matter showing more restraint and respect for their partners.

“We do not always achieve a desired result in negotiations with the Russian partners. However, in case of failure we prefer looking for new approaches to our partners, without getting hysterical,” he said.

As reported, on January 1 in an interview with Interfax the director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s economic cooperation department said that Russia was not going to lower the price for its gas for Ukraine unless it joins the Belarusian-Kazakh-Russian Customs.

“As for Ukraine’s demand that gas should be sold to it at the same prices as it is sold to Belarus, it is impossible. Russia will not agree to this. And why should it?” Gorban said.

The diplomat said that Russia and Belarus were members of the Customs Union and were moving toward a common economic union. In his words, Russia invited Ukraine to join the Customs Union and receive gas at the same prices as Belarus does.

“However, Ukraine wants to preserve two vectors simultaneously, that is, to join the European Union, where it is not really welcome, and to take part in the Customs Union, but only concerning some parameters that are beneficial to it. But such things never happen. You can’t be just a little bit pregnant,” Gorban said.

He pointed out that Russia earlier wanted to set up a consortium jointly with Ukraine and the EU to operate the Ukrainian pipeline system, but Kyiv declined this proposal, and Russia had to build pipelines bypassing Ukraine.