Ukraine to Rengotiate "Unfair" Gas Deal
Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov told journalists Wednesday that he will seek to renegotiate the country's "unfair" gas agreement with Russia when he meets his counterpart Vladimir Putin on October 27th.
Azarov said his country was not seeking any "discount" or "privileged quotas" for imported Russian gas, but insisted that the current agreement, signed by his predecessor Yulia Tymoshenko, was unfair.
Ukraine and Russia signed a 10-year agreement on gas supplies in January 2009 after a price dispute between the two neighbours left the European Union without fuel for two weeks amid freezing temperatures.
"Russia doesn't want to revise [the gas agreement]. Why? Because it's profitable for them. Why do we want to revise it? Because we believe this is an ill-profitable agreement for us," Azarov said.
"How much time should an agreement live for, if one party sees it as profitable, and the other as highly unprofitable? Something needs to be done with this agreement. Quite obviously, it is not viable."
The Ukrainian prime minister also spoke against the planned South Stream gas pipeline project, led by Gazprom, which is designed to bypass his country. Azarov said that the confrontational policies of previous governments had led to Russia wanting to diversify its supply routes to Europe. With Ukraine having have restored very good bilateral relations with Russia, he said that there was no need for the South Stream gas pipeline to proceed.
"We are ready to extend guarantees to Russia for years ahead that Ukraine is a reliable transit country for them, for any volume of gas" he said.
"We tell Russia that Ukraine is a reliable transit country for Russian gas in whatever direction you wish. We have traditional pipeline routes [like] Pomary–Urengoy–Uzhgorod. We are ready to upgrade our southern capacity and access the same city of Burgas in Bulgaria, which South Stream has as its objective via an offshore pipeline under the Black Sea," Azarov said.
Despite the improvement in relations, Azarov said that it "doesn't mean at all that we will continue to agree to this highly unprofitable gas agreement."