Russia, which has granted a discount on gas payments to Ukraine, will start paying about $98 million in cash annually to rent the Black Sea Fleet's base in Sevastopol starting in 2019, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych said at a press conference on Thursday.
A 1997 Russian-Ukrainian treaty on the Black Sea Fleet’s stationing in Ukraine set the annual rent payment for the base at $97.85 million, and this money has been written off from Ukraine’s debt for natural gas that Russia has shipped to Ukraine from the first day of its independence, Yanukovych said.
