NYT: Russia and Ukraine Meet on Natural Gas Pricing Dispute
Russian and Ukrainian officials met here late Monday to seek a solution to a dispute over energy that has exacerbated tensions and led to concerns about cutoffs of natural gas to the European Union.
The talks, under the aegis of the European Commission, are intended to push the two sides to reach an agreement on how much Ukraine should pay Russia for gas already consumed and for future consumption.
The meeting between Russia’s energy minister, Alexander Novak, and his Ukrainian counterpart, Yuriy Prodan, was the fifth of its kind since talks began in early May after Gazprom, the Russian state-controlled energy giant, raised the price of gas to Ukraine by 80 percent in March and threatened to cut off supplies if it did not pay up.