Reuters Ukraine hopes to reach an agreement on 2009 natural gas pricing with Russia before December.

“It would be very good if, by the end of November, we’d be able to sign a strategic agreement on gas deliveries to Ukraine,” Premier Yulia Tymoshenko said, according to a Ukrainian News report.

Russian Premier Vladimir Putin said that he expects a mutually-acceptable agreement will be reached “on the corporate level.” When the Ukrainian and Russian premiers met in Moscow last month, they agreed in principle to the elimination of middlemen companies, paving the way to direct contracts between Russia’s Gazprom and Ukraine’s Naftogaz Ukrayiny. Currently the Swiss-registered RosUkrEnergo company, owned by Gazprom and Ukrainian businessmen, currently buys gas from Gazprom at the Russia-Ukraine border.

The two premiers met in Moldova on Friday for meeting of Commonwealth of Independent States’ government heads.

Earlier this month, the two companies agreed that the Russian monopoly will deliver no less than 55 billion cubic meters of the blue-burning fuel to Ukraine next year. In October, Gazprom and Naftogaz agreed on introducing market prices for gas supplies and transit by the year 2012. For 2008, the two countries agreed that Ukraine will pay $179.50 for a thousand cubic meters.