You're reading: Diplomat: Russia won’t lower gas price for Ukraine unless it joins Customs Union

Russia is not going to lower the price for its gas for Ukraine unless it joins the Belarusian-Kazakh-Russian Customs Union, says Alexander Gorban, the director of the Russian Foreign Ministry's economic cooperation department. 

“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 in an interview with Interfax.

“Russia and Belarus are members of the Customs Union, and we are moving toward a common economic union,” Gorban said. Russia has invited Ukraine to join the Customs Union and receive gas at the same prices as Belarus does, he said.

“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.

The contract that Russia signed with Ukraine in 2009 was “quite beneficial” for Ukraine at first and envisioned a gas price $100 lower than the average market price of the time, he said.

“Now Ukraine wants an even lower price and at the same time it is behaving quite inconsistently,” 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.

“And what will this lead to? Everything will end up with a gigantic heap of metal on Ukrainian territory, which used to be a pipeline, getting rusty and turning into scrap metal,” he said.