Ukraine will renew attempts later this month to try to persuade Russia to review a 2009 gas supply agreement and secure cheaper gas, Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said on April 13.
Reuters – Ukraine will renew attempts later this month to try to persuade Russia to review a 2009 gas supply agreement and secure cheaper gas, Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said on April 13. One day earlier, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin appeared to have ignored a call by Ukraine to change the 2009 agreement, which Kyiv says set an unfairly high price for Russian gas supplies and which now weighs heavily on the Ukrainian economy.
But Azarov told a government meeting on April 13 that Putin had promised to send a deputy to Kyiv on April 19 to discuss “the validity of the current gas price formula.”
The 2009 agreement, signed by Russia’s Gazprom and Ukrainian gas holding Naftogaz under a preceding Ukrainian administration, set prices for Russian deliveries on the basis of the prices of oil products, which have since rocketed. It also set a base price of $450 per 1,000 cubic meters, the highest in Europe.
Moscow has offered to reduce gas prices if Ukraine joins a Russia-led customs union. Kyiv has so far declined, saying such a move would derail free trade talks and integration with the European Union.
