You're reading: Putin: Deficit of trade balance with EU keeps Ukraine from fulfilling its obligations under gas contracts with Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putin said the European Union has created a deficit of Ukraine's trade balance, which is negatively impacting the fulfillment by Ukraine of its obligations under the gas supply contracts with Russia.

“To a large extent, the crisis in Ukraine’s economy has been
precipitated by the unbalanced trade with the EU member states, and
this, in turn has had a sharply negative impact on Ukraine’s fulfillment
of its contractual obligations to pay for deliveries of natural gas
supplied by Russia,” Putin said in his letter to the leaders of the
European countries receiving Russian gas through Ukraine.

Putin said that, instead of providing real support to Ukraine,
European partners “talk about a declaration of intent,” which is “only
promises that are not backed up by any real actions.”

“The European Union is using Ukraine’s economy as a source of raw
foodstuffs, metal and mineral resources, and at the same time, as a
market for selling its highly-processed ready-made commodities (machine
engineering and chemicals), thereby creating a deficit in Ukraine’s
trade balance amounting to more than 10 billion US dollars. This comes
to almost two-thirds of Ukraine’s overall deficit for 2013,” the letter
says.

Putin’s letter was sent to the leaders of Moldova, Romania, Turkey,
Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Macedonia, the Czech Republic, France,
Germany, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Bulgaria, Austria, and
Italy.