Ukraine's third president Viktor Yuschenko suspects that Russia intercepted his conversations with former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko on the gas supply crisis in 2009.
"We reached an agreement [with the European leaders] to hold an international European conference in a place other than Moscow and Kyiv because Russia and Ukraine are parties to the conflict [involving the halt of gas supply to Europe]," Yuschenko said in an interview published in the Friday edition of the Internet publication Ukrainska Pravda.
Responding to a remark that Tymoshenko gave a conference in Moscow, where she reached agreements with Vladimir Putin, Yanukovych said: "Before those events, I called Yulia Volodymyrivna and told her the issue would be discussed at a European platform, that the EU was siding with us on the issue of the transit formula."
"I told Tymoshenko she should not go to a foreign platform for a political meeting. I said [then-CEO of Naftogaz Oleh] Dubyna should go to Moscow and take part in a meeting at the level of technical experts," he said.
Yuschenko said Tymoshenko had told him she would not go to Moscow, but still went. In this connection, Yuschenko said: "Yes. Because my conversation with the prime minister was tapped. Thirty or forty minutes later, the Russian prime minister talked with the Ukrainian prime minister and arranged a meeting in Moscow, which started a parallel game."
